ANNIKA KEEFER is an art therapist, youth arts worker and painter.
I use art making as a tool to better understand my experience of the world, through a lens of intensely bright colours and whimsical patterns. There is a naivety and youthfulness to my aesthetic which is both a celebration and reclamation of my 'inner child'.
Growing up in the Gold Coast hinterland has encouraged a deep appreciation of the natural landscape and my work also reflects this.
I find painting therapeutic and often use it as a healing technique with the young artists I mentor at DRASTIC - a youth based artist run initiative on the Gold Coast. I am a creative facilitator at DRASTIC and am helping to build a peer driven therapeutic creative arts and life skills program for young people. Drastic celebrates the strengths and talents of young people and encourages self-expression as a pathway towards connection.
I was recently awarded a grant from NAVIGATE (a young artist development program and City of Gold Coast arts and culture initiative) to undertake an arts-based Internship at tbC australia (Hoodie Mag’s producer). I am keen to develop the skills to run a studio program at Drastic that resembles tbC’s professional approach to collaborative art making with young people.
Annika is an effervescent young woman with a strong sense of responsibility and concern for the well-being of other young people. tbC and Hoodie Mag are thrilled to have met Annika and plan to stay in touch, engaging her and her young Gold Coast artists in future tbC projects.
@unicorn_inuniform
@drastic_ari
Photos: 1 to 5. Tiffaney Bishop