Esme Keenleyside (b. 2002, Essex) is a Margate-based painter whose work focuses on intimacy, memory, and the emotional texture of everyday life. Working in oil on canvas, she builds images through loose, searching brushwork and soft shifts of colour, allowing figures and animals to move between clarity and dissolution.

Her paintings often centre on quiet personal moments such as resting bodies, familiar companions, and domestic settings. These scenes carry a sense of tenderness and vulnerability, where comfort and uncertainty exist at the same time. Rather than telling fixed stories, her work evokes states of feeling including nostalgia, closeness, and the fragile warmth of shared space. Forms are sometimes partially obscured or blurred, reflecting how memory changes over time.

Keenleyside graduated from Winchester School of Art in 2024. She has exhibited in The Salon Show (TKE Studios, 2025) and This Is Love (TKE Studios, 2026). She is currently an artist in residence at the Tracey Emin Artist Residency in Margate, UK.