Oshorenoya David Francis turns everyday Black life into portraiture

In a solo show at 1853 Studios running 15–17 May 2026, Oshorenoya David Francis paints young black men in unguarded, intimate scenes—rejecting the posed, status-heavy portrait tradition and using masculinity, tenderness, and learning to insist on who deserves

When you walk into a stately home in the UK, the portraits look down from above like verdicts. They promise accuracy—an exact likeness, a clear mark of importance. They also quietly teach a hierarchy: who counts enough to be painted. and who disappears unless they’re useful as a servant in the background.

That old script is exactly what Oshorenoya David Francis presses against. In his solo exhibition at 1853 Studios, the paintings don’t perform. They don’t polish. They feel like someone caught the ordinary before it hardened into a pose—young black men. relaxed in their daily rhythms. roughly painted into the kind of snapshot that usually lives on a phone and dies there.

What stands out first is how little pretense sits in the backgrounds. They’re not designed to flatter. They hint at immediacy—moments that seem lived-in. whether a subject is hunched over a laptop or sharing a casual glass of wine. The subjects aren’t arranged like symbols. They’re simply there, in motion, letting their presence do the work.

Masculinity becomes the exhibition’s quiet argument. Francis doesn’t treat it as one fixed image. In ‘An Ode to the Physical Self’. a muscular man in only shorts photographs his reflection. reminiscent of the way people post on Instagram—self-aware. exposed. and oddly familiar. Colour in the background is used sparingly. keeping the focus on the figure and the performance of self. even when the performance is intimate.

In another work, a man tries to better himself by reading a chapter of ‘Atomic Habits’. He’s slumped in a chair. absorbed—or at least so absorbed it appears he hasn’t even registered us watching. The painting holds the pause between attention and action: one moment is attention-seeking. performative. and outward; the other is learning and introspection. inward and unadvertised.

Francis also turns tenderness into a subject you can’t treat as secondary. Two of the paintings feature people embracing dogs. The images carry a dual warmth: the softness of feeling, and the owner-protector role that love often demands. It’s love for ‘man’s best friends’ rendered as something more than a sweet motif—an insistence on care as a central part of human life.

The approach aligns with a broader tradition of painters who refuse to smooth their subjects into something more acceptable. Like Lucien Freud, Francis doesn’t aim for flattering resemblance. The point isn’t to make the sitter look better. It’s to capture emotion and spirit as they arrive.

He’s also placed. by the logic of the work itself. close to Alice Neel—an artist who pursued the kinds of people galleries and stately homes overlook. Neel’s question—who deserves to be painted—hangs over this exhibition. Francis appears to return it with his own answer: the people we miss until they’re gone. the migrants and everyday presences who shape a country. the ones who usually fall outside the frame.

And the stakes feel sharper when you consider the moment Europe is in. Political and racial divisions are rising throughout Europe, and the exhibition meets that pressure without raising its voice. By spotlighting those who often get missed. it asks viewers to do something portraits rarely ask politely: to look at humanity instead of hierarchy.

Empathy, the show seems to suggest through its calm insistence, begins when we see the human side of any individual.

At 1853 Studios, the exhibition was co-curated by Obi Nwaegbe and Natasha Virli, and ran from 15 to 17 May 2026. More information on the artist may be found on his Instagram account.

Oshorenoya David Francis 1853 Studios portraiture Black masculinity everyday moments Alice Neel Lucien Freud Atomic Habits Instagram dogs photography reflection