John Kelleher (b. 2001, Dublin, Ireland) is a painter working in oil-based abstraction, whose practice is shaped by process and material complexity. He studied painting at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, and completed an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art (2022–23).

Kelleher’s work seeks to offer viewers a visual framework through which to develop new ways of seeing. Drawing on a deep interest in making, spanning painting, woodworking, and print. His practice centres on the accumulation of techniques that inform a broader, more attentive mode of observation.

His paintings emerge through extended, iterative processes, often built up and reworked daily over several months. Influenced by an early fascination with cartography, he constructs layered visual environments in which reference points are embedded within the surface, allowing context to dissolve into atmosphere. These works function as spaces for reflection, inviting a renewed engagement with perception.

A sustained focus on surface and materiality underpins the practice, informed in part by his background in furniture design. Images are gradually uncovered through the accretion and removal of paint, or held in tension within carefully prepared supports. The resulting works foreground presence without figuration, evoking a sense of interiority through the act of painting itself, while resonating with traditions of Irish twentieth-century landscape painting and modernist mark-making.

Recent exhibitions include: Tracing Movement, Wondering People, Soho Revue, London (2026); Internal Landscapes, ArtGround Gallery, London (2026); Panic Room, rooom service gallery, Paris (2025); Dining Room, rooom service gallery, Paris (2025); Time goes by so slowly, SET Kingston, London (2024); Bedroom, rooom service gallery, Paris (2024); and The Road of Excess, Safehouse 2, London (2023).