We see everyone and no one simultaneously. We know so much yet understand so little. The truth has been drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Dreams of global connection have been exploited by the market and only ceased to divide us. Our new digital world has left us with nothing to believe in except the belief that nothing can be believed. Do we still believe in the autonomy of the self? Or have we surrendered ourselves to our new digital incarnation? Our sense of self has expanded, our ego artificially inflated, and our persona projected upon our social profile. New technologies shape our worldview, changing not only what we think but how we think. The work is a meditation on how our sense of the self has been altered with the onset of social media and our now globally connected world. Questioning how it has transformed not only what we think, but how we think, of ourselves, each other and the world beyond the screen. Deconstructed, oversimplified and reconstructed out of abstractly painted shapes, the essence of a live being is still present. Our humanness remains. Ageless, raceless and genderless, the portrait holds no belief or ideology, it is of everyone and no one. You and not you. See yourself in another and them in you.

Lewis Deeney

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Lewis Deeney’s work is instantly recognisable, his unique creative process uses interlocking geometric forms to bring a paradoxical harmony to the gestural abstraction of the painted surface. The result is a compelling interplay of chaos and order, creating transcendent paintings with an iridescent glow as colours glimmer upon the textured surface. Scottish-born; Lewis grew up in Dumbarton before moving to Dundee to pursue a contemporary art degree in which he graduated with a first-class honor in 2020. Lewis won both the James Guthrie Orchar Memorial Prize and the Farquar Reid Trust Prize during the degree show, as well as being selected for the Freelands Painting Prize. After being awarded the William S Phillips award, a bursary for his tuition fees, Lewis continued his studies at DJCAD graduating with merit in MFA Art & Humanities in 2021. Lewis has had three successful solo shows in Scotland and his paintings have been collected by public institutions and private collectors across the UK & Europe. In 2023 Lewis was shortlisted for the Chaiya Art & Spirituality Award and represented Scotland at the Interceltique Festival, Lorient, France. Currently Lewis works in his hometown of Dumbarton, near Glasgow, Scotland.