Artist's Bio

Karen Rankin Neal has always had a love and fascination of art and the natural world. She works from her beachside studio in Rarangi, Marlborough. This wild, coastal position, with its varied wildlife, is a constant source of inspiration. Karen is a self-taught artist, who exhibits her work nationally and is regularly commissioned to complete works for private collections. 

Scratchboard is a relatively new medium in the New Zealand art scene. It is a process of etching/scratching with abrasive tools to remove the top surface of black Indian ink to expose the secondary layer of white kaolin clay underneath. Scratchboard is an exacting medium and can produce highly detailed artworks, rendering infinite greyscale tonal values with dramatic effect.

Karen has won national awards in both scratchboard and pastel, and enjoys working in a variety of mediums.