Strong Features Painting

'The domestic setting is beautiful, still, and a touch awkward.' - Sacha Craddock - Art critic, writer, curator) 'Zena Blackwell is a must' - Carrie Scott, Art Historian and curator and founder of SEEN Zena Blackwell's awarding-winning paintings and drawings investigate the chaos, humour, and beauty of childhood. Zena is a painter based in Cardiff, Wales, UK. She obtained her Masters in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, London, and degree at Wimbledon School of Art, London. Returning to painting in 2016 following a break from the medium (during which time she explored sculpture, collage, performance and installation), she won first prize at the Cardiff MADE Summer Exhibition in 2017, presenting her first solo show consisting of over 30 paintings and drawings there the year after. The exhibition, ‘Seen Not Heard’, for which she was awarded a £5k production grant from the Arts Council of Wales, was included in a weekly list of the top 5 UK exhibitions by a-n (The Artists Information Company) and Wales Arts Review included it in a top 10 list of the best Welsh Visual Arts for 2018. In 2019 she won 3rd prize at ‘PAINT’, an open painting prize at PS Mirabel in Manchester. Zena was selected for the National Eisteddfod in 2018, '19, '22 and '24 and has exhibited widely. Her work is held in the National Library of Wales’ permanent collection and in private collections around the World. Zena was shortlisted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2021 and the BEEP Painting Prize in 2022. In 2024 Zena won the Friends of the Glynn Vivian Prize at BEEP Painting Biennial. Zena founded the instagram blog Contemporary Cymru in 2017 and between 2003-2011, she co-founded a critically acclaimed live music event in London and also DJed nationally and internationally.