London the Metamorphosis

As London evolves into a Babylonian-style city of lofty towers, the artist Anna Keen has been inspired to paint this London Metamorphosis. While each new edifice heads to the heavens, the exposed entrails of these vast construction sites strangely resemble ruins.

Her large canvases are enriched with details stemming from patient observation and on-the-spot sketches, and from voyages around the city made by helicopter, boat, road and on foot.

Like the eighteenth-century artist J.M Gandy, who simultaneously painted London in ruins and in construction, Anna Keen takes us just beneath the surface of the metropolis, to where the emotional landscape lurks and to where the soul of London is heading.

London-based art historian Edward Lucie-Smith has followed Anna Keen’s painting since 1995 in Rome.