Karen Stephens is an Australian artist and arts worker based in Winton (Qld) whose interdisciplinary practice examines the politics of the gaze and distorts structures of seeing through contemporary landscape and portraiture painting. Stephens completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art (2017) and is currently completing Post Graduate studies in Business, Arts and Cultural Management (Deakin University). She was appointed as Exhibition Supervisor of the Outback Regional Gallery, Winton in 2018.

Her paintings have been shortlisted in several prestigious awards and in 2016 she won the Flying Arts Alliance’s Queensland Regional Art Awards. Most recently her works can be seen on two billboard sized artworks on the Outback Way Outdoor Gallery, a major cross-cultural arts and infrastructure project on the Plenty Highway, Northern Territory supported with funding from the Australian Government’s Building Better Regions Fund and the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal. Stephens is one in three Central Queensland artists to receive a place making commission and opening exhibition at the Rockhampton Museum of Art (2022) supported by the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund and selected as one of twelve emerging and established essay writers from across Australia to be included in the peer-contribution collection publication made possible with funding from the Gordon Darling Foundation to detail the strength, history and content of Rockhampton Museum of Art’s collection. Karen is currently working towards two exhibitions of new work to be exhibited in early 2024.