Julie Bennett – portfolio

Contact the artist

https://www.juliebennett.co.uk/

julie@juliebennett.co.uk

All my paintings and prints are available for sale and can be delivered locally or collected from my studio complex in Maidenhead, Berkshire.

I also take portrait commissions in oil, working from life in the studio or from photographs, creating pieces to treasure. Get in touch by email.

Studio visits are always welcome by appointment — I’d love to show you the work in person.

Artist information

I am an oil painter whose portrait practice is driven by gesture, movement, and the physical presence of paint. I work in oil at a variety of scales, allowing brush marks and colour to lead the image, and my paintings are more concerned with emotion, mark-making, and the fleeting sensation of a moment than with strict representation.

Influenced by fashion, celebrity culture, and the flow of contemporary life, I often work from tightly cropped photographic sources drawn from film, music, magazines, social media, and my own visual diary. I digitally manipulate these images to remove background distractions and enhance specific elements. This allows the narrative to centre on what matters most, rather than on incidental environmental details. Faces remain loose and unfinished, edges blurred, and surfaces wet — images caught mid-formation. Bold, clean colour and visible brushwork push against the smooth perfection of digital imagery, foregrounding vulnerability and human presence.

I studied painting at Camberwell College of Arts and have exhibited widely. My ongoing #mirrorselfie series explores identity, visibility, and self-representation in contemporary culture. Selected works from this series, including a self-portrait longlisted last year for the Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize, are on view at Cornerstone Arts Centre from 2 – 23 May during Oxfordshire Art Weeks.