Cavan Reed-O’Connor was a joint winner of the 2025 David and June Gordon Art Prize at the Royal Scottish Academy’s New Contemporaries Exhibition. Cavan studied at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. His practice reflects on the ambiguity of the everyday, capturing fleeting, often overlooked moments of daily life through enigmatic oil paintings. His pictures invite the viewer into a process of looking, encouraging engagement with shifts of tone, shadow and surface, and a deeper contemplation of perception. His oil paintings of street scenes are largely in monochromatic, neutral colours, but a small section is in highlighted in full colour, which draws our attention to the spaces inhabited. It is rather like walking down a street and allowing one’s gaze to focus on specific architectural details which capture our attention.