News
Sikelela Owen: Elected to the Royal Academy
Sikelela Owen has been elected as a Royal Academician to the Royal Academy.
“Sikelela Owen was born in 1984, in London she lives and works in Essex and London. She received her BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (2006) and holds a Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Academy Schools, London (2012).
Ideas of community, intimacy, and authenticity are central to Sikelela Owen’s practice. Drawing from early modern paintings of the 19th century, personal references, broader imagery, and narratives, Owen creates loose, layered figurative paintings that foreground the subjects and communities comprising her lived experience and memories of growing up with family in Zimbabwe, Jamaica, and America.
Through undefined landscapes, visible underpainting, muted tones, and incomplete descriptions, the looseness of oil paint perfectly mimics the fluidity needed to describe these spaces and the connections formed across them every day.”
