Emily’s love of landscape stems from childhood holidays by the sea in Cornwall, the huge Fenland skies near her home and her grandmother’s watercolours. She studied in Leeds and Madrid before graduating from Aberystwyth University in 2005 with an MA (distinction) in Fine Art. She has been living and working on the west coast of Wales ever since taking inspiration from its wild and open places; the endlessly reconfiguring relationship between, land, water, sky, under its ever-changing light and weather.
‘The work is grounded in the practice of revisiting familiar places, walking over well trodden paths, just ‘being’ in the landscape or using quick sketchbook scribbles as an open door, a beginning point
Back in the studio the slow process begins of building something more, wherein an experience of a place, with all the sensations, memory or emotion attached to that, are woven into a conversation: A back and forth between artist, place and paint- that is, oil paint with its visceral luminous qualities, which adds its own strong voice.
The intention is that the work might go beyond mere topographical depiction and find a deeper resonance.’