Australian born artist Kareena Zerefos (b. 1983) grew up in the semi-rural area of Dural in the north-west region of Sydney. The open spatial quality of the environment of her childhood influenced the themes in her work: isolation, abandonment, memory and dreams. An illustrator with a design background, she is influenced by the subject matter of collected photographs from her family’s past. She develops images of children, imaginary creatures, animals and old memories using pencil, gouache, letraset, ink and tea. Her formal training was undertaken at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney, completing a degree in design majoring in graphics. Kareena spent six months at the University of Alberta, Canada, studying print making, industrial design and visual communication and completing her formal training she returned to Australia and worked with professional graphic design firms and as a freelance graphic and web designer in Sydney. It was during this time that she took up drawing as a part-time hobby and in 2005 she moved away from web design to work full-time in illustration for projects such as record covers and fashion and sometimes for her own projects that she regards as 'illustrations’.
Zerefos has displayed artworks in a number of group exhibitions curated by Yen Magazine, which uses the exhibitions to launch a book featuring works of the artists involved. One of these exhibition/book launches, Curvy (2009), featured a number of female artists from 120 countries around the world. Zerefos has worked on commissions for album covers and tour posters for Australian musicians including Bob Evans and Sparkadia. Her first solo show was in June 2008 at the MTV Gallery in East Sydney, followed by a second solo show at FamousWhenDead Gallery in Melbourne.
- Writers:
- Trick, Simon
De Lorenzo, Catherine
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2011
