About Emerson Pullman
Emerson Pullman (b.1995) is a figurative artist living and working in North Wales. He graduated from Leeds Arts University in 2020. He is a figurative painter with a dynamic use of colour and technique creating contemporary figurative paintings exploring the boundary between realism and abstraction. His work alludes to the difference between the trivial and the profound, the transient and the eternal, the surface and the substance, order, and disarray.
The intense layering of the paint, the evidence of the brush work and the sometimes incongruous, vibrant splashes of colour demand the viewer’s attention and are a counterpoint to the one ‘perfect’ transitory image. The work is intended to reflect a greater truth than a momentary snapshot can offer. In his latest body of work, his paintings explore themes of isolation, memory, and introspection.
Through referencing historical Dutch painting as well as more contemporary influences such as Gerhard Richter and Adrien Ghenie, I create works that challenge the idea of the portrait, and through adding and scraping away detail and experimenting with transparencies of paint hint at something just out of reach for the viewer to contemplate.
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