My practice functions as an interrogation of the 'exhausted image'- the point where digital data and physical reality collide,distort and eventually dissolve. Having long worked within the realms of sculpture, film and digital 'non-places' i view the world through the lens that 'everything is a macquette' : a temporary shifting prototype for a reality that is increastingly mediated by screens. 

My recent transition into oil paintings is not a departure from this digital inquiry, but a deeper, more haptic dive into it. While my earlier work used 'impossible garments' and mobile phone-clips to critique societal standards and digital dissociation, I am now using the medium of oil on loose canvas to 'trace' the data we leave behind.

Painting allows me to explore Haptic Memory - the physical sensation of making that a pixel can not replicate. By translating digital glitches, blurred CCTV stills and the 'uncanny' textures of our online existence into layers of charcoal and oil, I am attempting to re-materialise the ephemeral. These works are not just images; they are records of the friction between the messy, tactile act of painting and the flattened,indexed nature of our digital identities.

In this expanded practice, the canvas becomes a site of reclamation. I am interested in what happens when we pull an image out of the digital ether and force it back into the physical world, exploring the gaps where the data fails and the human remains. 

Julia Keenan 2026

'Life in the Gourd' Paintings 2022/23