Keith Cunningham’s drawings and oil paintings of the human figure reveal a consistent and multifaceted engagement with the body, as both a formal structure and a vessel of psychological connection. Throughout his career, Cunningham returned to the figure not to portray likeness or narrative, but to explore presence, absence and the shifting boundary between form and abstraction. In his drawings, the human form is treated in a variety of modes: reduced to its essential rhythms, reproduced in the flux of motion, fixed in contemplative stillness. These figures are never overworked; they emerge from the page with a sense of immediacy and composure.

In contrast, Cunningham’s oil paintings introduce weight and texture to the same investigation. Figures are embedded in layered, often dark surfaces, where pigment has been built up, scraped back and reworked. At times, the body seems to dissolve into the background. Elsewhere, it asserts itself more directly, though always with ambiguity. These are not portraits, but presences, marked by tension, contemplation, and a kind of existential quiet. Across both mediums, Cunningham treats the figure as a site of enquiry rather than depiction. His work resists sentimentality or clarity, favouring instead a measured ambiguity that allows each viewer to bring their own reading. In doing so, he reaffirms the human body as a subject not just of visual interest, but of emotional and psychological resonance.