Well-known Christchurch-based artist Caroline Kelly has been selected to represent the Academy of Fine Arts at the Christchurch Art Show 2025 at Te Pae on 25-27 April. The Academy is selecting an artist who embodies the Academy’s vision of art excellence to exhibit at an Academy stand in each of the four art shows. It is also supporting the STUFF Art Aotearoa Gold Award this year by buying each of the regional award winners, and will host the national Stuff Art Aotearoa Gold Award announcement ceremony in Wellington at the end of the year.

Caroline will be familiar to NZAFA members as the winner of the President’s Prize in the Academy Open Show in 2023. In the same year Caroline also received a Highly Commended Award from Ashburton Art Society’s annual exhibition and took the people’s choice award there, received First Place in the Edinburgh Premier Art Award in Dunedin with ‘Resonate’, and was a finalist in the Portrait Society of Atlanta 2023 competition.

Last year Caroline was selected for The International Prize Leonardo Di Vinci, Milan, the WAA Women Art Award at the international Woman’s Essence Show 2024 in Barcelona, and the premier International Prize “Phoenix of the Arts”, Venice. She has already been a semi-finalist this year at the TARTGET Prize international painting contest, Madrid, with three works in the ‘figure and portrait’ class.

Caroline is a well-known and popular portrait and figure painting tutor and will be demonstrating during the Christchurch Art Show