Kelly-Anne Cairns

Kelly-Anne Cairns studied painting at Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen. After graduating in 1999 with a BA (Hons) she was awarded the John Kinross Travel Scholarship to Florence. She was accepted for the BP Portrait Award exhibition in 1999 and has continued to paint with much success ever since.

She exhibits regularly in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow selling her work worldwide. The author J.K.Rowling is among her many private collectors

Kelly-Anne currently works part-time as an arts tutor and shares a studio with her artist husband Stephen Shankland in a small coastal village in North East Scotland. Her main sources of inspiration are Oriental style, the design and texture of fabrics and aged frescos of Italian Renaissance painters. Described as "accomplished and powerful" by The Herald, Kelly-Anne describes her work as portraying the human form and emotions. I manipulate the figure and its surroundings by exploring the contrasts between the angular shapes surrounding the figure and the soft contours of the body.