Women's rugby art: Sadia Kabeya (2026) Original Acrylic Painting by Agnieszka Lokaj

This semi-abstract figurative painting captures England rugby player Sadia Kabeya in a moment of pure physical and emotional force, inspired by the Red Roses' match against USA during the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025. Two figures blur into one another, deep indigo forms pressing and pivoting around a luminous core of pale gold and peach, suggesting the split-second collision of bodies, the embrace of a tackle, or the surge of a lineout. Paint spatters and drips animate the surface with the unpredictability of live sport.

Part of Touchlines of Fortitude, an Arts Council England–funded exhibition celebrating female resilience inspired by the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025, this work belongs to a body of paintings made in response to the Red Roses: athletes whose courage, unity, and determination I've sought to translate into paint rather than record.

The palette of cool sky blues, soft moss greens, and warm flesh tones creates an atmospheric, almost dreamlike quality that sits in deliberate tension with the physical intensity of the subject. Power and fragility coexist on the same canvas. This is not sport as spectacle; it is sport as a way of asking what strength looks like, and who gets to embody it.
An original acrylic on canvas.

Materials used:

acrylic

Details:

• Acrylic painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 30 x 30 x 2cm (unframed) / 30 x 30cm (actual image size)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the back
• Style: Expressive and gestural
• Subject: People and portraits