Anna Keen: Dimbola and the West Wight Paintings

Anna Keen: Dimbola and the West Wight Paintings

Anna Keen - local paintings and sketches, and her London the Metamorphosis

Anna Keen became Artist in Residence at Dimbola around 2020, was responsible for generating a large amount of investment in Dimbola. When we met her, she had just published her London- The Matamorphosis - her pictorial and textual account of the Thames Estuary and River, and some of the changes and metamorphoses the river has seen recently…:

Lovely little sketch Anna did for us - of Pallant House and Redoubt House in Terrace Lane, Freshwater Bay, where we live.Anna was educated at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris - the school where many famous artists - including Géricault, Degas, Delacroix, Fragonard, Ingres, Moreau, Renoir, Seurat, Cassandre, and Sisley - were trained - and her very painterly sketches and oils reflect her own talents.  https://annakeen.com/

The Joy of Anna Keen, and our modern-day Freshwater Circle
There she was, bopping into our lives, this lovely impish young woman who positively fizzed with enthusiasm about Art, about Life, her painting, her son - Faust (fabulous name!) - and her latest book - London the Metamorphosis (just been published 2020). A book of her art-research into the changing face of London on the Thames as recorded and painted by Anna personally exploring the Thames estuary east of London - sombre, umber and burnt-sienna oil paintings and oil sketches of the physical man-made detritus that both litters and in a slightly macabre way illustrates the long and often lost history of this fabulous tidal river and its muddy marshes and numerous creeks, DaneLaw, Napoleonic, Great War and World War Two defences, historic sites back to the Danish pirates, slavers, and the Vikings, and the remnants of vast Oil terminals, dockyards and Roman harbours - all recorded by Keen in her large-scale oil-paintings, sketches and drawings - and with a contextual text by art historian Edward Lucie-Smith. The book - and of course her paintings - were impressive, and it was a joy to welcome her - as the new Artist in Residence at Dimbola - to our little West Wight cultural community.