Julie Bennett – Oxfordshire Artweeks

46 Julie Bennett

Region: Didcot- South & Vale

Artform: Painting

Bennett’s work is driven by expressive gesture, emotion, and the physical presence of paint. Her ongoing #mirrorselfie series explores the mirror selfie as a familiar part of contemporary life, using it as a way to think about identity, visibility, and belonging. Working from images found online, she removes background details to focus on body language, pose, and the phone itself — now an everyday part of how we see and present ourselves. Through bold, wet-on-wet oil painting and visible brushmarks, her work pushes against the smooth perfection of filtered digital images, encouraging viewers to slow down and connect with the human presence behind the screen.

Julie Bennett is a portrait painter who studied painting at Camberwell College of Arts and has exhibited widely, including at Mall Galleries, North Wall, Norden Farm Centre for the Arts, and the V&A South Kensington. Her work has been recognised through awards and residencies: she was a finalist for The Signature Art Prize, won the People’s Choice Award at the Brixton Blog & Bungle Summer Art Show, and completed a six-week residency at Bankside Hotel, which culminated in a solo exhibition. Most recently, Bennett was longlisted for the Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize; the selected self-portrait will be shown at Cornerstone Arts Centre alongside three other large-scale works from her #mirrorselfie series. Her paintings are held in private collections in the UK and abroad and have been featured in The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Independent, Stylist, and Classic Rock.