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My name is Emma and i'm 35...... I was born with a pencil in my hand, and spent a lot of my childhood scribbling away furiously. My notebook came everywhere with me, and it always felt like a natural thing to be doing. My early teens was lived in the 80's, and I was hugely influenced by all the exotic women you started to see in pop videos like Duran Duran's. I loved Nagel's artwork like the Rio cover, and I also loved all the airbrushed Syd Brak women that were everywhere at that time. I used to draw all sorts, but started gravitating towards sketching from photos of fascinating women I saw in mum's fashion mags or my teen mags. My icons at the time were strong glamorous women like Debbie Harry and Kate Bush (and glam men of course like Bowie and Adam Ant). I think my colourful portraits combine inspiration both from the influences of my youth, and from my many years working as a designer for a major cosmetics company. I have had a lifelong love of fashion, glamour, kitsch and pin-ups. Having worked as a designer I am very much caught up in the excitement of creation, and I love the endless creative possibilities that come from painting, and making a canvas come to life. I try to paint subjects who are a little provocative, or challenging, or cheeky. I like the painting to have some 'life' or attitude about it. Its great to look to the burlesque world and challenge the conventional idea of what is beautiful, as a woman I'm bored of body image and ideas of beauty fed to us in the media. I like that these girls have an interesting mix of nostalgia (in their costumes), as well as being totally modern women, they are not afraid to be who they want, a fantasy even. I like to make a tribute to them in some way, immortalise them in that moment, celebrating who they are and what they love to do - by doing what I love to do. I hope that by painting these amazing women I'm actually celebrating all us girls in general |
