Skeen’s practice moves between self-initiated wall paintings in abandoned or overlooked spaces and work developed in the studio. At the heart of his approach lies an interest in site-specificity and how the location of a work shapes its outcome. His public and ephemeral wall paintings, inevitably erased or destroyed, survive primarily through photographic documentation. This tension between permanence and impermanence runs throughout his painting and photographic practice.
Skeen also reflects on the ways wall paintings are recorded and shared. Works that are monumental in size are reduced to thumbnails, often encountered on a phone screen and subsequently stripped of scale, physicality, and presence. In Space Debris, he responds to this by carrying canvas to walls, capturing fragments of wall paintings at a 1:1 scale before bringing them back into the studio.
These fragments become the foundation for new work, where gestures made in situ engage in a dialogue with the more deliberate, reflective decisions of the studio. The resulting paintings carry the immediacy and energy of the wall while embracing the intimacy of the gallery.
Unlike his expansive murals, this body of work narrows in on detail, foregrounding imperfection. Drips, provisional marks, and incidental lines are not concealed but become central compositional devices. With this shift in scale comes the possibility of slowing down and inviting the viewer to sit with the work.
Space Debris ultimately questions the lifespan of a painting, asking not only when a work is finished, but what it means for a work to endure.
Skeen graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2021 and has exhibited work and painted murals in Glasgow, Edinburgh, England and Germany. He began painting letter based graffiti in the early 2000s and now employs deconstructed letter forms and lines in the context of abstract painting. He works intuitively with different tempos, energies, and timescales to emphasise exploration and discovery without a pre-determined destination.