Emma is an artist based in Cornwall, UK. 

‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on.’

William Shakespeare, The Tempest 

Emma’s practice centres on the surface as a site of encounter: a liminal space in which viewer and image converge, and where meaning is not fixed but produced in the act of looking. Here, perception and projection become difficult to separate. 

Working from both found and personal photographic sources, her paintings maintain a rigorous fidelity to the visual information of the reference image. This loyalty to what is visibly present resists overt symbolism, allowing the image to remain unresolved. 

Through processes of distillation, obscuring, and the removal of context, familiar subjects begin to shift and estrange. The surface starts to behave like memory itself, partial, unstable, and continually rewritten so that what is seen feels at once immediate and uncertain. 

By withholding clear meaning, the paintings draw attention to the act of looking, and to the tendency to search for significance even where none is given. In this way, the work offers a quiet, persistent reflection on the absurdities of contemporary life. 

Exhibitions 

• 2026 – Ghosts of All We’ve Ever Been, The Old School House, Redruth 

• 2025 – Cornish Maids, Wharfside Art Hub, Penzance