ANNA KING

Anna lives just outside Duns in the Scottish Borders and has a studio on the Marchmont estate. She takes as her subject matter areas that most other artists would pass by - abandoned and disused buildings, wastelands and empty, feral land - and finds beauty in the most unlikely of places. Anna is instinctively drawn to peeling paint and cracked windows rather than pristine buildings and traditional landscapes and it is this ability to see beyond the usual, as well as her sparse and highly individual style of painting, that marks her out as a unique talent.

Anna explains of her work, 'I find myself in a no-mans land. Unclaimed territory, that, for a while anyway, I can have as my own. It's an adventure playground that nobody meant to build, a desolate, wild expanse of cracking concrete and decaying structures. Once a hive of human activity, these forgotten places have no purpose left - but no rules either - and nature is slowly and relentlessly taking the land back.'

Following on from a sell-out degree show in 2005 at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Anna's career has gone from strength to strength and in 2007 she became the first winner of the prestigious Jolomo Landscape Awards. She has recently had successful solo shows at the Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh, Gallery Heinzel, Glasgow, Beaux Arts, Bath, Traon Nevez, Brittany and 108 Fine Art, Harrogate as well as many group shows. In January 2011 she was asked to take part in an exhibition celebrating the opening of the new Riverside Museum in Glasgow.