Emma Whitelock
My paintings explore the emotional connection to land and sea in a semi-abstract style. I create expressive works, often inspired by my native Yorkshire, but also from time spent regularly in Cornwall, with it’s luminous light. Starting with a sense of place, I work by building up layers. I paint primarily in acrylic, but combine this with a variety of mixed media, including texture mediums, inks and rich glazes. Texture is an integral element of my process and I enjoy revealing and enhancing areas as they emerge, rubbing back and building up, scratching into the surface and working with palette knives, fingers and a variety of implements in addition to traditional brushes. This creates diversity and energy in my mark-making. I’m not tied to realising a specific scene, preferring to allow the media to evolve freely until it forms into a coherent image. Close up, the works appear very abstracted, then standing back, these elements meld into a whole.
“Under big skies and through atmospheric use of colour, I portray the lone figure as a tiny abstracted mark in the vastness of nature, the outer world reflecting the inner. Often portrayed on the cusp of dusk or dawn, the paintings seek to reveal those hidden spaces in between, a borderline time when through the obscurity, truths are revealed. They are charged moments, filled with remembrances past and possibilities for the future.
Perhaps nowhere on earth is as evocative as the sea. From wild storms to lulling tides, it is the perfect mirror to the human condition. In these two paintings I explore both sides of this coin, the exhilaration and the calm.”
Emma's process
see more