Artist Feature: Anna McKay
"expose vulnerability and isolation, while others reflect solitude and comfort."
Anna McKay is a feminist artist who aims to deliver strong messages through her work in hopes to empower women. Many of her illustrations explore consequences of womanhood with subjects such as menstruation and gender power struggles.
It wasn’t simply the feminine themes that drew me into her portfolio, but all of the elements in her work as a whole. McKay has a very skilled eye for the use of negative space, creating well-balanced, simple and mod compositions. Executed with a dramatically-contrasted yet often fleshy palette, she reveals a seriousness in her subjects.
In much of her work, there is a disproportionate amount of this empty space, defining the boundaries and spotlighting her subjects and their emotional place; some expose vulnerability and isolation, while others reflect solitude and comfort.
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Anna McKay is a self-taught artist and illustrator based in Christchurch, New Zealand. She holds two degrees, a Bachelor of Arts (Cinema Studies and Mass Communications) and a Diploma in Graphic Design. She has exhibited her work in several group exhibitions and has been published in several publications. She is the curator of a creative blog called The Visual Female and is also a poet. Visit her online, here.