STATEMENT
For me, painting is a physical and contemplative encounter in which narrative gives way to the act of looking. While rooted in gestural abstraction, my work explores spaces that emerge through processes of layering and reworking. These imagined spaces invite the viewer to enter a charged field of tension and ambiguity, where rhythm and colour unfold.
The spaces that emerge in my paintings exist somewhere between the remembered, invented, and emotionally sensed. They suggest a threshold, an interior, or a memory of place. We encounter the world through interruptions, overlapping information, shifting attention, memory, and constant change. Painting allows these conditions to be experienced without needing to be resolved.
I am interested in what happens when one space meets another, when boundaries dissolve, or when unfamiliar environments begin to feel temporarily inhabitable. There is a sense of passage in this movement between spaces: a crossing from one state or field into another. Underlying this is a broader question of place and belonging. If we need places in which to locate ourselves, what does it mean to construct a place that does not already exist? The paintings may be understood as a search for somewhere imagined.
As marks accumulate, space begins to emerge. Divisions suggest horizons, depth develops between layers, colour becomes atmosphere, and clustered forms create openings, boundaries, foregrounds, and distances. Repetition, interruption, and variation create their own rhythms, pulses, and moments of resonance. The eye naturally attempts to organise complexity spatially, and landscape emerges as a consequence of perception. For me, these paintings offer a way of entering environments without rules, where uncertainty is not something to overcome, but something to inhabit.
BIOGRAPHY
Stephen Keane (b. 1972, Watford) is a London-based painter working in oil, gloss, pastel, and charcoal on canvas and paper. He studied in Leeds and at Central Saint Martins.
His paintings emerge through an intuitive process, in which gesture, colour and form shape imagined spaces. They develop through cycles of accumulation, erasure, and revision, with each stage informing the next. Working loosely and through improvisation, Keane is less concerned with technical process than with the visual and spatial possibilities that emerge through painting.
He often works at speed across several pieces within the same session, allowing ideas, gestures and material relationships to develop in parallel. Works are then left between sessions, giving them time to settle and allowing subsequent decisions to emerge through a process of looking, distance and return. A painting may take between six months and two years to reach its final state. Although he works across both canvas and paper, paper remains his preferred surface for its immediacy and responsiveness.
Keane's approach has developed from an earlier engagement with figurative painting, montage, photography and video, and these histories continue to inform his sense of composition, cropping, juxtaposition and space. Drawing has been a constant throughout his life, beginning at an early age as a way of moving beyond the everyday and imagining spaces beyond the immediate world.
Keane lives and works in London. He is Gallery Director of Lea Bridge Gallery, where he also curates exhibitions, alongside projects in other contemporary art spaces.
Selected Exhibitions
For me, painting is a physical and contemplative encounter in which narrative gives way to the act of looking. While rooted in gestural abstraction, my work explores spaces that emerge through processes of layering and reworking. These imagined spaces invite the viewer to enter a charged field of tension and ambiguity, where rhythm and colour unfold.
The spaces that emerge in my paintings exist somewhere between the remembered, invented, and emotionally sensed. They suggest a threshold, an interior, or a memory of place. We encounter the world through interruptions, overlapping information, shifting attention, memory, and constant change. Painting allows these conditions to be experienced without needing to be resolved.
I am interested in what happens when one space meets another, when boundaries dissolve, or when unfamiliar environments begin to feel temporarily inhabitable. There is a sense of passage in this movement between spaces: a crossing from one state or field into another. Underlying this is a broader question of place and belonging. If we need places in which to locate ourselves, what does it mean to construct a place that does not already exist? The paintings may be understood as a search for somewhere imagined.
As marks accumulate, space begins to emerge. Divisions suggest horizons, depth develops between layers, colour becomes atmosphere, and clustered forms create openings, boundaries, foregrounds, and distances. Repetition, interruption, and variation create their own rhythms, pulses, and moments of resonance. The eye naturally attempts to organise complexity spatially, and landscape emerges as a consequence of perception. For me, these paintings offer a way of entering environments without rules, where uncertainty is not something to overcome, but something to inhabit.
BIOGRAPHY
Stephen Keane (b. 1972, Watford) is a London-based painter working in oil, gloss, pastel, and charcoal on canvas and paper. He studied in Leeds and at Central Saint Martins.
His paintings emerge through an intuitive process, in which gesture, colour and form shape imagined spaces. They develop through cycles of accumulation, erasure, and revision, with each stage informing the next. Working loosely and through improvisation, Keane is less concerned with technical process than with the visual and spatial possibilities that emerge through painting.
He often works at speed across several pieces within the same session, allowing ideas, gestures and material relationships to develop in parallel. Works are then left between sessions, giving them time to settle and allowing subsequent decisions to emerge through a process of looking, distance and return. A painting may take between six months and two years to reach its final state. Although he works across both canvas and paper, paper remains his preferred surface for its immediacy and responsiveness.
Keane's approach has developed from an earlier engagement with figurative painting, montage, photography and video, and these histories continue to inform his sense of composition, cropping, juxtaposition and space. Drawing has been a constant throughout his life, beginning at an early age as a way of moving beyond the everyday and imagining spaces beyond the immediate world.
Keane lives and works in London. He is Gallery Director of Lea Bridge Gallery, where he also curates exhibitions, alongside projects in other contemporary art spaces.
Selected Exhibitions
Auto Amor x Lea Bridge Gallery, London, Group show, Open Call - 2026
36 Hours, Three Rooms, Walthamstow, London, Group show, Open Call - 2026
Skin Of The Earth, Three Rooms, Walthamstow, London, Group show curated by Tim Green - Painting - 2026
Patterns in Chaos, Lea Bridge Gallery , Group show curated by Stephen Keane and Alex Fox - Painting - 2026
Vice Versa, The Errant Collaborators, Mirror, Arts University Plymouth. Group show curated by Johanna Melvin - Painting - 2025
WILD, Three Rooms , Walthamstow, London, Group show curated by Stephen Keane - 2025
On Beauty, Pictorem Gallery, London. Group show curated by Gisli Bergmann and Patrick Bryson - 2025
Vice Versa, Terrace Gallery at Lea Bridge Library Pavilion, London. Group show curated by Johanna Melvin - Painting - 2025
Shared Origins, Winns Gallery , Aveling Centre, Lloyd Park, London. Group show curated by Stephen Keane - Painting - 2025
A bag of hope... A box of tears. Garage & Terrace present. The Garage Gallery, London. Group show curated by Karl Bielik - Painting - 2025
Half Life, Pictorem, London, Group show curated by Stephen Keane - Painting and drawing - 2025
Painting Open, Second Floor Studios CIC, no format Gallery, London - 2024
Overlap, No.1 Church Lane, Leytonstone, London, Group show curated by Stephen Keane - Painting, Sculpture and Photography - 2024
Finding Form, no format Gallery, London, Group show curated by Sara Breinlinger and Stephen Keane - Painting - 2024
Concrete > Abstract, Terrace Gallery, Lea Bridge Library Pavilion, London, Group show curated by Stephen Keane - Painting - 2024
Raw Edges, Dark Yellow Dot, London, Group show - Painting - 2024
VALUE, Barbican Arts Group Trust, London, Group show - Painting - 2024
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36 Hours, Three Rooms, Walthamstow, London, Group show, Open Call - 2026
Skin Of The Earth, Three Rooms, Walthamstow, London, Group show curated by Tim Green - Painting - 2026
Patterns in Chaos, Lea Bridge Gallery , Group show curated by Stephen Keane and Alex Fox - Painting - 2026
Vice Versa, The Errant Collaborators, Mirror, Arts University Plymouth. Group show curated by Johanna Melvin - Painting - 2025
WILD, Three Rooms , Walthamstow, London, Group show curated by Stephen Keane - 2025
On Beauty, Pictorem Gallery, London. Group show curated by Gisli Bergmann and Patrick Bryson - 2025
Vice Versa, Terrace Gallery at Lea Bridge Library Pavilion, London. Group show curated by Johanna Melvin - Painting - 2025
Shared Origins, Winns Gallery , Aveling Centre, Lloyd Park, London. Group show curated by Stephen Keane - Painting - 2025
A bag of hope... A box of tears. Garage & Terrace present. The Garage Gallery, London. Group show curated by Karl Bielik - Painting - 2025
Half Life, Pictorem, London, Group show curated by Stephen Keane - Painting and drawing - 2025
Painting Open, Second Floor Studios CIC, no format Gallery, London - 2024
Overlap, No.1 Church Lane, Leytonstone, London, Group show curated by Stephen Keane - Painting, Sculpture and Photography - 2024
Finding Form, no format Gallery, London, Group show curated by Sara Breinlinger and Stephen Keane - Painting - 2024
Concrete > Abstract, Terrace Gallery, Lea Bridge Library Pavilion, London, Group show curated by Stephen Keane - Painting - 2024
Raw Edges, Dark Yellow Dot, London, Group show - Painting - 2024
VALUE, Barbican Arts Group Trust, London, Group show - Painting - 2024
