Winner of the National Contemporary Art Award 2023

Meet the artist at our Herne Bay gallery, Tuesday 27th June from 5pm-7pm

Emma’s work is a fusion of imagination, vague memories, dreams, history and legends. Of people met in the mind’s eye and folk known for years. Each piece has a vague story for the viewer to conceive. Each viewer tells a different tale.

What Does The Fox Say  |  Oil base with Acrylic on canvas, framed

Emma’s use of paint is experimental and purposely accidental. Layers of colours, textures, and patterns. Frequently she paints over a painting creating a murky history underneath that peeks through. Building up a narrative of ideas and concepts that give the viewers glimpses of a mythical and magical world that lives around and within all of us. Using strongly intentional strokes of the brush that leave a rough texture, pushing and pulling the paint, scratching, and scraping it back.

Growing up on a farm in rural New Zealand, inspiration is often taken from childhood memories and dreams. The common thread throughout Emma’s work is that we need to take care of our place and its creatures, to celebrate both those we still have and those which survive only in books and artworks. ‘To make people smile’.

Emma currently lives with her husband and three children in the coastal village of Plimmerton just north of Wellington.

View Emmas full collection HERE