D.W.C. After - Painter Anwen Keeling

ANWEN KEELING Anwen Keeling is an award-winning realist figurative painter from Sydney, Australia where she teaches life drawing at the College of Fine Arts. She earned her BFA from Australia National University (ANU) with First Class Honours, and was awarded the University Medal. She then earned her MA in fine art at the Winchester School of Art in Barcelona. She won the ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award in 2007 and the Canberra Prize in 2003. And, she was a finalist in the Sulman Prize (at least twice), the Metro 5 Art Award, and the Doug Moran Portrait Prize.[wide] [full-width]

Anwen Keeling is a story teller, and her favorite genre is mystery. She sets her characters in moments of tense drama - perhaps conflict? Or a lone figure in pensive thought, as in her series 'Waiting'. Through this tension, she makes ordinary familiar places feel unfamiliar, cold. The lighting is often drab, dark, stark, like in film Noir. And, her titles give tantalizing clues as to the situation, but provide no answers. The resulting images hint at a life entrapped by the angst of modern day existence - but not entirely without hope. It raises questions as to why we sometimes make life harder than it is. Anwen explains she wants to give the viewer, "a sense of quietness and stillness from our otherwise hectic existence."