Karen Stephens

Karen Stephens is an Australian artist based in Winton (QLD) whose interdisciplinary practice examines the politics of the gaze and distorts structures of seeing through contemporary landscape and portraiture painting. Stephens completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from Griffith University's Queensland College of Art (2017).  

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Her paintings have been shortlisted in several prestigious awards and in 2016 she won the Flying Arts Alliance's Queensland Regional Art Awards. Most recently her works can be seen on two billboard sized artworks on the Outback Way Outdoor Gallery, a major cross-cultural arts and infrastructure project on the Plenty Highway, Northern Territory (2020- 2022). Karen is one of three Central Queensland artists to receive a placemaking commission for an inaugural exhibition at the Rockhampton Museum of Art (2022) supported by the Australian Government's Regional Arts Fund and selected as one of twelve emerging and established essay writers from across Australia to be included in the peer-contribution collection publication made possible with funding from the Gordon Darling Foundation to detail the strength, history and content of Rockhampton Museum of Art's collection.