Born in South Africa in 1960, Claire Beynon immigrated to Dunedin from Cape Town in November 1994. In 1982 she graduated from the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg in 1979 with a BA Fine Arts with a Distinction in Printmaking. The following year, she was accepted onto the postgraduate printmaking programme at the Chelsea School of Art, London, and spent several months there.
Claire’s first solo exhibition was in Johannesburg in 1984. She has exhibited regularly since then, with solo and group shows in New Zealand, South Africa, the UK and the Republic of China. A finalist in the 2001 Cranleigh Barton Drawing Award, she won a Merit award in the same competition in 1999.
Working predominantly on paper, Claire is committed to demonstrating drawing as an authoritative medium in its own right. Her images are densely worked, multi-layered and often on a large-scale. Combining formal, abstract elements with strong references to local form, light and shadow, her work crosses the boundaries between the familiar and the mysterious, linking the physical with the metaphysical.
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