Emma is an artist whose unusually varied life history brought her to the practice of art.
Born to British and Mexican parents, she was raised in the post-industrial decline of 1970s northern England, an environment redeemed by the glorious countryside on the doorstep of her native Sheffield. From early childhood until her mid twenties she had little contact with her Mexican mother or her culture, a separation that has heavily influenced her work.
Emma originally chose Medicine as a career: a decision informed by the combination of a lack of perceptive careers advice and a search for security. Her father’s premature death made her reconsider, and she decided not to continue with Medicine. A growing desire for a creative outlet led to a career as a programme maker at the BBC, but throughout this period there was a growing interest in art, and many independent experiments in making, among other adventures. Eventually the need to pursue art outweighed the risk of leaving permanent employment. A Foundation course was followed by a Degree in Fine Art at City and Guilds of London Art School.
Though Emma studied painting, the exploration of an idea through whatever medium is most appropriate is central to her practice. Increasingly this means trying to make subjective experience resonate through materials and spatial installations.
The key concerns in the practice have stemmed from life: the unpredictability of circumstance, absence and presence, the condition of the outsider or foreigner, the marginal and the discontinuous. Landscape and place; feeling at home in many places and nowhere.