#0027 EMMA WOOLLEY - FACES BECOME MEMORIES!

Welcome to the Creative Nowhere Land Podcast. 

Faces become vessels of lingering memory. The world falls away, but the human remains. 

Beautiful Right?  Well, these are just some of the poetic ways that our latest guest uses to describe her work.

Emma Woolley is a contemporary portrait artist with a bold and expressive style who uses her work as a way of processing emotions and memories, not only to connect with herself, but also as a way of connecting with other people.

Emma studied fine art and then went back to study graphic design and illustration at university, and has spent the last 20 years working as an art director using her creativity to tell stories, problem-solve, and translate ideas for big brands and businesses.

But after a series of life-changing events, including sadly losing her Mum, forced her into stillness for the first time in a very long time. Emma found her way back to painting, realising that she could use it as a way of finding hope again, and a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. 

No longer neglecting herself as an artist, painting has been at the forefront for the last few years, and she's been prolific. Emma has produced multiple bodies of work, including 'The Wonder Series' and 'The Space Between Us'. She's been shortlisted for the Women in Art Prize, there's been a solo exhibition and also a beautiful 72-page hardback book, 'Paint Lingers', which acts as a time capsule or kind of visual diary of Emma's journey back to painting.
 
In this episode, we discuss the whole creative journey so far. 

Everything from Emma finding her style and, in her words, painting in mid fidelity, to what it's like to balance being an art director with being an actual artist.

The need for creatives to feel fulfilled,  the use of art to process some of those tough emotions, why telling your story is so important and why connection never stops and why it's one of the most important things for us humans to hold onto. 

Check out the links below to see Emma's work while you're listening to the podcast, of course!  Hope you enjoy this episode of The Creative Nowhere Land Podcast.

EMMA WOOLLEY WEBSITE: https://www.emma-woolley.co.uk/

EMMA WOOLLEY INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/emma_woolley_artist/

Transcript

Opening And Emma’s Poetic Lens

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello everyone and welcome to the Creative Nobelland Podcast. Faces become vessels of lingering memory. The world falls away, but the human remains. Beautiful, right? Well, these are just some of the poetic ways that our latest guest uses to describe her work. Emma Woolley is a contemporary portrait artist with a bold and expressive style, who uses her work as a way of processing emotions and memories, not only to connect with herself, but also as a way of connecting with other people. Emma studied fine art and then went back to study graphic design and illustration at university and has spent the last 20 years working as an art director, using her creativity to tell stories, problem solve, and translate ideas for big brands and businesses. But after a series of life-changing events, including sadly losing her mum, forced her into stillness for the first time in, well, a very long time, Emma found her way back to painting. Realizing that she could use it as a way of finding hope again and a light at the end of a well very dark tunnel. No longer neglecting herself as an artist, painting has been at the forefront for the last few years, and well, they've been prolific. Emma has produced multiple bodies of work, including the Wonder Series and The Space Between Us. She's been shortlisted for the Women in Art Prize. There's been a solo exhibition and also a beautiful 72-page hardback book, Paint Lingers, which acts as a time capsule or kind of visual diary of Emma's journey back to painting. In this episode, we discussed the whole creative journey so far. Everything from Emma finding her style, and in her words, what it's like to paint in mid-fidelity, what it's like to balance being an art director with being an actual artist, the need for creatives to feel fulfilled, the use of art to process some of those tough emotions, why telling your story is so important, and why connection never stops, and why it's one of the most important things for us humans to hold on to. You can check out the links to Emma's work while you listen to the podcast, of course, but for now, let's find out why paint has memory. Let's get into it. Paint lingers because paint remembers. Talk to me about that, Emma.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Because first of all, I want to say how you write about your work is absolutely beautiful. There's some stuff in there that I was like, oh my goodness, faces become vessels of lingering memory.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah, a lot of this was me going through reams and reams of kind of video and recordings and recording myself, pretty much. And what I tend to do, especially when I'm doing work like this and bodies of work, I literally will just sit there and just sit with a with say like an iPhone, and I will just blurb it all out. It's just like it's all coming out, yeah. Before you paint, or while you're painting, or while I'm painting, or there's something that's coming through, I'm like, I need to sit down, I need to talk about that. It's like notes from the studio, pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Where does that come from? Because a lot of artists I think have a lot of trouble speaking about their own work.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Yeah, I know, and I feel like because I have to rationalise quite a lot of things being an art director. For 20 years I've worked in design, I've got two different heads, haven't I? So I've got an art head and I've got a design head. But with my design head and being an art director, I have to rationalise my kind of like creative. So it's something that I've grown to do over the past sort of 20 odd years. I've learnt to be able to sit there and rationalise why I've done something. It helps me though, it helps me process things. If I sit there and I talk it through with myself, because I'm having a conversation with myself, really. It helps me to talk through what the next stages are with it.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

And do you think that's something other artists might benefit from?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

I reckon they probably do that, but they probably aren't so open about it.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Do you think they do?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Absolutely. A lot of us sit there and we work in silo, don't we? But you think about all of the artists and their different studios and working on their own. I reckon that there's a huge amount of time where they sit there and maybe they don't openly record themselves taking notes and stuff and memos, but they certainly sit there and just contemplate what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

I agree in some respects, but the way you write about your work, I'm sat here holding the book Paint Lingers. But yeah, reading it, I think there's a beauty in how you describe your work, and I think that there's something that other artists could potentially take away from that. But the the way you write about your work, I know you say you blurb it down, but it's so poetic, it's so beautiful. As I say, faces become vessels of lingering memory. The world is falling away and the human stays.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

That's exactly what happens in the paintings. If we look even at the current work, the space between us, the the this final version that I'm working on, that again is a depiction of just things falling away. That tells a great story that really the actual emphasis is the two people, and then everything else is just irrelevant.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

In your words, can you describe your work? Bearing in mind we've just words out there. You're very good at talking about your work.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Oh god, it's really difficult to explain. I predominantly work in portraits and I have them my whole life. It's a way of me connecting with myself, it's a way of me connecting with other people. There's a truth about it, there's finding a truth.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Is that what you mean when the paint has memory?

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah, absolutely. It does, but then they are a series of memories. That's what they are. That's what I see when I look at them. Even when I look at the Wonder series, they're a collection of memories, basically, and what they are really are timestamps of moments in my life. I can drill down right to the last second of where that kind of came from or that kind of fleeting moment that happened. When I look at that piece of work, I can pick up on it and go, Yeah, I know exactly where that came from and why when I was painting it. Do you know what I mean? I may start with a reference when I paint, but that's fundamental as a portrait artist. You either start with the person, the sitter, yourself, or a reference. But the work transcends into something else, the reference or the sitter is the catalyst, and then it literally just evolves from there. And I put so much more narrative into my work, and again, I think that kind of overlaps back to again the design side of me and wearing many hats and stuff like that. So both kind of practices work with each other in tandem.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

I look at the portraits and Emma Woolley artists, yeah, and it's very instinctive, dynamic, free-flowing. Whereas in the design world, it's much more constrained. It's that whole expression of art versus almost the problem solving of the creativity of design.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it is.

Early Talent And Choosing Art Over Music

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Is this a good point for us to talk about your journey? Because you've obviously already said that you've been an art director for 20 years, but yet now, in the last few years, it's been very prolific in the painting. So should we go backwards a bit?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah, we can do. I mean, I how far back do you want to go?

SPEAKER_01 8:03

But that's entirely up to you.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Um, okay. Originally, when I started to become interested in paint, was oh you're like 15 years old, I reckon. So it was 15 years old when I first got into painting portraits, but I think really tapping into this kind of skill that I had and very early on, knowing that I could draw, I could articulate myself with the use of paint quite well, and very quickly picked up oil painting at the age of 15, 16.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

And was painting in a quite advanced way. I remember taking classes with people that were like 30, 40 years old and I was 15 and painting to the level that they were painting at. Really? Yeah, I just advanced really quickly when I was younger. It was quite this teenage child genius when I was younger. I mean, now it plateaus out a little because I'm in my 40s and it's just like oh, it's just you're creative. But when I was younger, it was very evident that I'd picked up or was highly skilled when I was a teenager and being able to draw and draw quite well and articulate myself within pain. And I just picked it up.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

And was that the catalyst of then what I'm gonna go? I'm gonna go and study this.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Yeah, yeah, that's what kind of yeah, that's fast forward a little bit, and that's I knew then at that point this was the point for me. There was a fork in the road when I was about 14-15. I was either gonna go down the road of going do music, or I was gonna go down the road of doing art. My family were very musical, um, so I was always involved with music when I was younger. So fork in the road at 15, 14, 15, and I took the art rout.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Why? And over music, why?

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Oh, okay, because I wasn't allowed to study art and music at the same time, and they told me I could do one or the other.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Who told you that? The teacher this was school.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Oh, school. So you were you couldn't take to the same thing, basically.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Well, it's too many creative subjects.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Well, there we are. Too many creatives and not enough humanities, that was what it was said, basically.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Closely linked creativity though, but you just chose a slightly different Yeah, yeah. I decided to take the route of art because did you feel you were I mean you mentioned child genius, but did you feel you were more talented at the art than you were at the music?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

I think I was probably on the same on the cusp of something. Really? I think if I'd have pursued the talent that I had, because very quickly me and Ben picked up playing the guitar and music very easily. Dad taught us really early on, intuitively, no manuscripts or self-taught. Surrounded by my dad was the same, we were surrounded by musicians. It was 1980, it was very early 90s, it was very bohemian. My dad was friends with UB40, they were around, he was friends with them. So we had mus musicians in and out of the house all the time. My mum and dad were very kind of bohemian, really.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Interesting that you chose the art because it almost sounds like it probably would have been in a slightly easier option to choose the music.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

I think my family were creative as well, and I think music and art are hand in hand, absolutely. Do you know what many people that I speak to, we talk about doing art, friends of mine who are artists are also singers, also play the guitar. It's hand in hand, really. Anyway, I yeah, I digress a little bit, but like it is, I think it's yeah, it's just one of those things that runs parallel, really. Yeah, I think you probably get a lot of musicians that are also quite talented in art as well.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

So the art took you to study fine art at Wolverhampton.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Yeah, so I studied, I went off and did foundations, then I went off to Wolverhampton and studied fine arts and came out of there, studied that. That was a real eye-opener, that was great because I went into really sort of painting and painting for me, and that was great, and finding myself through paint as well.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

What sort of work were you painting?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

I so portraits, big portrait work, big portrait, distinctive colourful same colour. It was very painterly so I was quite influenced by people like Lucian Freud, Tyshan Scheringberg was a big one for me, Jenny Saville, all of the great painters really that painted like painterly paints, sculptural paints. That was something that I was always drawn to. And there were loads of painters like that in the 90s.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

When you paint like that, are you to try and get that painterly element, that sort of almost it's contemporary but sort of traditional? Are you trying to capture the person, the essence, the memory, the yeah?

SPEAKER_00 12:32

I think it's because it's more that it's more than that, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Looking at your writing and how you express, it's more than just going, oh, this is a nice picture of this person's face.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Yeah, it's it's skin deep, and there's so much more. There's a psychological element to it. It's not just necessarily. I mean, um, my work is not my portraits aren't just face value. There's narrative in them, there's lots and lots of narrative, there's lots of depth, and there's hit stories.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Um have they always been like that?

SPEAKER_00 12:59

No, they haven't. I think what's shaped me is the last 20 years of art direction to feed them stories in. So very early on when I was painting at uni, I think it was a lot of play and being able to paint in a very painterly way and expressive way. So big paint brush strokes and stuff like that, and being able to get away with doing something, it was something that really excited me that did painting like that, rather than overly painting and like that hyper realistic kind of look and feel. For me, I wanted paint to stay like paint. It's almost like an abstraction, it's almost like painting in mid-fidelity. You've got low fidelity, mid-fidelity, and high fidelity being like this hyper-realistic side. But mid is like the sweet spot for me because you can see it's figurative, but also at the same time it's very painterly. The paint comes through still. I don't want it to look like a photograph, or I would take a photograph. So for me, it's a happy medium, but then I do want it to look figurative as well. So I don't want to go too abstract. So it's a bit of a balancing act, yeah.

From Fine Art To Design And Motion

SPEAKER_01 14:05

You've written about some of your later work anyway. It's about capturing moments that most people don't stop to see. So it's not that this is this person and this is his essence, it's almost like those in-between moments.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Which is interesting because it's something that you've felt you've developed over 20 years. So what happens when you come out of Wolverhampton? What let's just get through the practical. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

I'll go through the practical. So came out.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

So Did you have ambitions of being the artist, the Jenny Savile, the the Lucian Freud?

SPEAKER_00 14:38

You're gonna get Um No, I think I was still just finding myself. I was young, I was 20, and no, so it was early noughties, wasn't it? So I was still finding myself growing up and all that kind of business. For me, I think I loved what I was doing, and I was always gonna be inherently artistic. I took that practice when I graduated, came out, was a resident artist for three or four years, and managed to get work very early on in the early 2000s.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

What does that look like as a resident?

SPEAKER_00 15:06

So resident artist basically for me, it was getting opportunities like commercial opportunities, like doing paint work for restaurants and stuff like that. So people would take on commissions, or maybe it was like public spaces. So that was the jobs that I was getting, which were great, but I was 20, I had no business acumen. The university had not taught me in a way that okay, you've got all of this talent, but how do you commercialise it? I think this is a problem that a lot of students have when they leave school. It's great, I've got all this talent. What am I gonna do? How am I gonna do this? You've got to apply business to it, you've got to apply logic to it, and I think there's a certain element that is lost or was lost at that point with me. Maybe it's slightly different now these days, but it was with me. So, like I went out there really enthusiastic about doing stuff, and then just looked round and thought there are jobs, but they are few and far between, and I was like, this is not good enough. I've gone through uni, I've done all of this stuff, I've graduated. I've got a bill of uni, yeah, and now, and I've got a pat, you know, you've got all of that behind you, but then at the same time, for me, it's like I just can't see this working out. There wasn't enough foundation and there wasn't enough like structure there, and I thought, okay, this is not secure enough for me, basically.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Lacks opportunity a lot, and we sort of falls into the remit of that. Oh, the starving artists, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

And for me, it was like okay, because a lot of my friends now, especially from fine art, you I talk to them now, and they do nothing that's art related now, but they do something completely polar opposite, or ended up going off and doing something completely different. Went back to union lore or something, and they're just completely different people. And do you do any art now? Don't do anything anymore. It's crazy. So for me, I thought, okay, well, I'm gonna go back to uni, right? So I went back to university, did graphic design and illustration. So it was a double whammy, two degrees in one, basically, which was cool. I'd got the structure of graphic design, and I'd got the flexibility and freedom of illustration, which was really good for me. So that was my arty bit. I was like a bit of freedom, balance, but the constraints of graphic design that I knew I had to learn, and also the climate and what was going on out there, there was an increase in digital work in the late noughties as well. So, like, more and more artists were turning to digital artwork, and I was starting to notice this as well. And actually, I was thinking, you know what? Let's take a look at motion graphics for the first time. So I did, and I went back and I learned the foundations of animation right from the beginning, how it works, frame by frame, all the very beginnings, that those foundations, and learnt motion graphics very early on.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

And did that become like a specialism for it?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Well, I mean, I 20 years later, and that's what I work in After Effects, I can do all sorts of madness in animation. I use Cinema 4D, I do lots of 3D modelling and stuff like that. I do lots of walkthroughs, and I spin many places in this world, you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

The skill set that you've built up.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

But the but the graphic design and illustration, going back to it, it's got more scope.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Yeah, and that was the point. That was the point for me because I knew there was a commercial element, and I also knew there were more opportunities out there. So when I graduated, I landed an opportunity straight away, which was fantastic. It was a small boutique agency, and they yeah, they were really impressed by what I'd got and that I could spin plates, but also that I was creative as well. There are a huge amount of graphic designers in our industry that aren't particularly very creative, and it shows, it really shows, yeah. So I think that was a bit of a standout that not only could I apply the graphic design, I was also creative as well. There was proof that you know that I can draw, I can paint, and so all of these kind of things translate through graphic design, like composition and stuff like that, and understanding composition and layouts and all sorts of things like that. So, yeah, that was it for me. I landed a job very early on as a bit of a runner, really. So fast-paced environment, and really not used to that at all, came out of uni being a lazy student, reality, painful night, and I'm like, yeah, just blase, like projects that were six or seven months, and I'm like, yeah, oh, and everyone's stressing about them, and then all of a sudden you jump into agency mode, and it's like this there's a deadline, and you've got to get it done by two o'clock Tuesday, and it's six Friday.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

If it doesn't, the company loses ten grand, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Exactly. So like the pressure was on, but I was able to thrive under that pressure, and I delivered some great stuff. I was actually working with the Reps Theatre, and they were one of our clients. Then I remember the very first one of the very first projects that I worked on was the little shop of horrors, and I got to do the front creative cover, which was fantastic. That was right up my street. So I did this incredible composition in Photoshop, stitching together this crazy plant, and it was great, it was brilliant. So then that then translated through, and we did lots of boardings and bus design and all sorts of stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

So you got to experiment with your creativity.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I look back of the last 20 years of all the different jobs that I've worked on, I've worked on some really brilliant stuff. Like we all we talk about that in the agency that we have these heads and that we take one off and put another one on. And I'm a little bit like that myself, whereas I could take my art head off and put my design head on, and then take that one off and put my motion graphics head on, because that's what I have to do here, and that's what I've had to do being an art director anyway, be able to work in motion graphics and then flip to working in stilts, photography, back to something else.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

I think we all wear many, many different hats, don't we?

SPEAKER_00 20:55

We do, we do, but I think we can thrive under in many different scenarios, not just necessarily apply ourselves, just some people spend their life with one discipline, which is great because you become a master, you become the absolute master of that.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

We've spoken about it on before on the podcast jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than the master of one.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

People don't know the whole quote, yeah. And it's the idea that actually, if you do dip your toe in what you can like you exactly like you've said, you can take all these elements of illustration, design, graphics, yeah, yeah, paint, and pull them into being an all-round creative. Within that agency, you say you thrived, and over the next 20 years, yeah, you work up from being low-level creative to senior creative level, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

Yeah, I did. So from a runner, I was a junior, which is where you start when you graduate anyway, and that's the way, or it was the way agencies work. You started at the bottom and you worked your way up and you earned your badge, really, based on the amount of hours you did and the commitment to the business as well. Quality of work. Yeah, quality of work, commitment, showing up every day, being consistent. And that was exactly what I did for a solid three or four years, just worked hard, really hard. And at that point, I was I'd gone past the stages of just being a kid, I was growing up, I was getting to a point where I wanted to take things a little bit more seriously.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Were you creating outside of this, or was it all hyper focused on just the design? What I'm saying is, were you painting?

SPEAKER_00 22:25

No, no, I wasn't. It was all focused. You were getting your creative fix from Yeah, I was getting a creative fix from the work I was doing. Because I was learning so much at an accelerated rate, like Cinema 4D and 3D. Well talk about like hyper-fixating in ADHD, and one minute you love something, and the next minute you hate it, and the next minute you love something. I I mean, like, this is how 3D came my way. There was a job that required us doing an underwater project, and I said, wouldn't it be great if we learned it literally took on 3D? And from there I did, and spent hours and hours and hours learning 3D, and then that was it, and then we were committed to it, and then six months later we were building stuff in Cinema 4D. 15 years later, I'm still using the software self-taught.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Yeah, self-taught.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

I was given the basics at uni, but I really learned how to use the software properly when I left uni because you apply it to real life, real-world problems. Yeah, uni's just a simulation. When you come out of that, and then it's right, here's the reality of the job, do it. You're like, oh, okay. So you do it in a completely different way, and you cut not cut corners, but you find better ways of working. That's what I'm trying to say. They find smarter ways of working and delivering. Yeah, and delivering work really as a creative. Yeah, there's there's huge amounts that I could talk on, but we could talk purely on just art direction in this podcast, honestly, because that's a big part of my life as well, being an art director. I didn't actually finish what I was saying, but the whole situation was that if I was a junior, then I was a creative, then went to senior creative, then I was given the opportunity to be not only the art director, but to oversee the creative department then.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

If you could take some of the elements of what it means to be an art director with the hindsight that you've got of doing it for 20 years, what do you think that you've taken from being an art director into the painting now?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

The ability to translate an idea, the ability to create narrative, whereas work may have been in the past, like early work would have been instinct, but I think a lot of work now I have instinct, but with the backing of narrative and storytelling, you know what you want to say with. Yeah, I know what I want to say, and I feel like it's my true voice when I'm painting as well. It gives me the opportunity to vocalize what I want to say in a visual way. It always has, anyway, from an art direction point of view, but from a painting point of view, I think I apply that same theory to painting as well now.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

That's interesting. Because with the design, you have to have a clear-cut brief. This is what we're trying to say, this is the message we're trying to achieve, and this is the result.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

We do. When I dipped back into painting, I'd got my art director's head on still.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

When was it that you dipped back into the painting?

Agency Life, Pressure, And Growth

SPEAKER_00 25:30

After the pandemic. So during the pandemic.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Because something happened with the agency, didn't it?

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Yeah, something happened with the agency. So as soon as the pandemic hit, the business went into liquidation. And then very early on, then at that point, we had to rethink the things that we needed to do and what was going to happen. Obviously, losing the business was just an absolute killer. We'd spent 10 years building it, and that was really hard.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

How did that affect your identity as a creative?

SPEAKER_00 25:58

It was terrible, really, because you put your whole life into 10 years of growth. I just, it was crazy. It was absolutely crazy.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

But was your identity wrapped up in that as well, is what I'm trying to say. Because we do identify as our professions.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Absolutely. My work, my myself, I was all over the work, it was obvious. We had some really creative people that we worked with. There were 16 people that were working at the business at the time.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

When you're a senior, do you feel like you've got responsibility to those people?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Well, yeah, I mean, the way we were set up, we had somebody who looked after the studio from a creative point of view, which took the kind of onus off me necessarily doing a traditional managing role, which was really good. And the way it worked for me was that it didn't feel like there was a hierarchical kind of thing going on. I run this thing, it was just that I oversee the creative and other people get involved. There was no kind of you do this as your role, that's what you do. And it's there wasn't and I think that was what was quite nice about the business as well, because there was no no one was hunger on positions. That was what was cool about it. Considering what we were doing, it was quite relaxed, actually, which actually helped with the flow internally. So as a creatives were creative, and then there were designers with designers and that was that, but yeah, I so the the pandemic forces that business to essentially not exist anymore.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Does that mean you then is this the point that you start to get a bit more reflective about what you actually want to be achieving?

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Yeah, so think about it. 10 years, you're on a hamster wheel, and you're constantly churning work, you don't stop to think about what you're doing, where you're going, and everything else. Meanwhile, I'd got married and then after that I'd got divorced. All of that happened in in the hamster wheel, it was crazy. So, like whirlwinds stuff as well.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Life changing.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Um, yeah, yeah, absolutely, life-changing stuff.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Like we were saying before the podcast, the universe has a strange way of shaping things, right? Putting things in front of us to make us question perhaps where we are, what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Yeah, and what we're doing. And that and maybe in a way, maybe that was kind of what happened. So yeah, I mean, a lot of people say, Oh, it was awful, what happened, and the business went under and everything, but what came out of that was a refreshed and revised, renewed me, really, to be quite honest. Because during the pandemic, I I'd gone through a breakup with my ex-wife, and I decided that I would go back home, and I was just like, for the interim, I'm going back home for a bit, lay low, find myself for a moment, and then I will be up and running. Meanwhile, the pandemic comes along, and all of a sudden I'm in in a situation where I'm back at home with my mum, and I'm like, okay, I'm here now for the foreseeable future. That summer that we had the pandemic where we couldn't do anything, we weren't allowed out, all of that madness. We were still working the business to the very end. It was a real difficult thing because we'd we furloughed the guys, and if you know about agency life, you'll know that the people in your studio are like your family. When you furlough people, it's it was just awful, it was really bad. We worked till the very end, we did everything we possibly could, but we just couldn't we just couldn't salvage the business. It was just it was beyond repair, really.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Because like you say, you describe it as a hamster wheel.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Yeah, yeah, and that's why.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

You're on that hamster wheel, you're going and going and going and going. And this gives you that moment of just, oh, this is what a bit of stillness feels like.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

It and yeah, and exactly, and that's exactly what that was. And I don't think I'd had that ever for a very long time.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

It was quite a strange time.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

It's constant, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Divorced from an ex-wife, moving back home, dealing with a pandemic, dealing with a business essentially failing.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

And all the stuff that's wrapped up in that it sounds like you needed this stillness.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Absolutely. I sat out in the sun over the summer and I just enjoyed the sun, and actually by stopping, I was able to get off hamster wheel and go, What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing?

SPEAKER_01 30:02

What was your answer to that question at the time?

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Um, I think it I think at that point it was about finding myself again because obviously I'd split up with my partner, and it was like that again has a knock-on effect to your identity because you've been with somebody for several years. That has a big knock-on effect, and then with the business going, it's like I'm just sitting there going, This is like an upside down. Well, even now, when I talk about these things, I say to colleagues about this and say, How could we have ever predicted that this was gonna actually happen? That life would be so different several years later, because you're in it, you're married, you're in a business, you just think you're there forever, you didn't-that's what you think.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

But then the universe comes along and throws some.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

And absolutely knocks it off its axle, which is exactly what happened, and all of a sudden there's this new path that's laid, which now, when I look at that path, I'm like, my god, it absolutely needed to happen.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

But when you're in it, you don't see that.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

No, but it now on reflection, it absolutely, for me, for my own uh awareness, for my own self, it had to happen.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

I say that we are where we're supposed to be.

Pandemic Collapse And Identity Shock

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Absolutely. So so many people in the pandemic decided to paint, draw, do these things, do these things. Yeah, yeah. Oh, gardening, this, that, all these different things that people did during the pandemic that they would never dream of doing. It was a like a giant sabbatical for everybody, basically, wasn't it? Really? And not only that, the sun came out for the summer, yeah. And for me, I just sat there and just didn't really do an awful lot. Just sat and just did a lot of thinking, really. And then I think we decided a guy that I've worked with now for over 20 years as creative director, he came back to me and said, Look, what do you think? Let's reform, let's do something. Said, Yeah, okay. And then we started up, you say tomato, we would do something new this time, it would be very different to what we had before, but it would be very streamlined, smaller. But yeah, that would that was the plan. To be fair, it was just like we're starting a new business and right in the middle of the pandemic, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

So you had that stillness, but the hamburger wheel was still spinning.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Well, it was sort of slowly, so you want to jump back on that soon, and then you go straight away jumping back on it. Yeah, yeah. So then we did, so we did like literally a couple of months later, it was like, okay, we're back in, we're back in the game.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

But within that stillness of the pandemic, are you thinking about creating you thinking about art?

SPEAKER_00 32:28

I'm thinking about lots of different things now, because I'm thinking about doing work for me now, not necessarily for a client. So when I sat there a few times, I was in fact, I did an animation. Yeah, I did an animation, I did a few things for myself. I really enjoyed doing them, but that they were purely just for me, for my own satisfaction and for just an animation.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

What was the animation about?

SPEAKER_00 32:51

The animation just was a kind of like a black and white. It was I built it in Cinema 4D, it was just like a really simple narrative of a paper airplane flying through streets and stuff like that, and it was very quiet, and it was basically depicting the current times of the pandemic, and it was black and white. I'd listened to a song in the garden and it triggered me to create this animation, and I built it from what was the song? So the classical music piece that really just moved me, and I was just like, wow, I love that. Every time I hear it now, I'm like, God, I remember when I made that animation. I need to dig it out actually. I didn't see it.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

So we see this after the after such a long time. This is like you say, creating for you quite new.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

For the first time, I'm doing something for myself.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Yeah, rather than the client's brief. The client's brief.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

The brief and the constraints and the everything.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Yeah, self-initiated brief from university.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

And it was fun. And then for me, then I thought, okay, what else can I do? So there was this big part of me that kind of lay dormant for 15-20 years that kind of was ignited then. It was it ignited in me. I was like, okay, I've always drawn as an art director, I've had to draw scams to produce things. So I've never stopped drawing, I've always had to do that. It's part of my job. But to draw and just draw the things that I want to do, yeah, but it was only when we'd started to create this business that the penny had dropped for me, and I was like, I know I need to do something that fulfills me as well. Not only just to do my job, but do something that fulfills me as an artist as well, and not lose sight of that.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

But I guess for the last 20 years, you haven't really felt like an artist, you felt like an art director.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm delivering something for somebody else, again, expression versus problem solving. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

So you get this bug again for creating for yourself lots of different mediums and animations and drawing. But did you feel like you could do that because you then were starting Usay Tomato as an agency again? You had that balance.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Yeah, I did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Was there something to do with that balance of going, I feel like I can create because I've got this other thing where I can earn money and use my skill set as a day-to-day?

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Yeah, I think at that point as well. So we we had to strip things back, and things were a little bit more relaxed now because we were a smaller business, because we were only serving clients for us, not for a bigger group of people, because we hadn't got a big agency, so we hadn't got all of the overheads anymore. It's for us. What do we need that keeps us afloat? Really, not just afloat, but keeps us going and we're happy, yeah. And we're keeps you comfortable to facilitate you doing the stuff that now you want to do. Yeah, and I think all three of us in the business feel exactly the same way because it allows us to go away and do the things that we want to do. And I won't speak for the guys, but it does I see that now our work life balance is so much better. Naturally, as a result of that, now our well-being is so much better, and and we are better people for it, really.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

And do they presumably they have other entities going on about that?

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Yeah, I mean they are, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I mean that that's something that we've all done. I think we've mastered the art of work-life balance, which is what everybody kind of strives, strives.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

What would be your key takeaway that you would give the listeners to the podcast about finding their own work-life balance? You know, you've got the home groups.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

Well, I can't go through a pandemic and then sit there in the summer and and then the penny will drop, and it's a difficult thing, really.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

I okay, so I don't know whether there is an answer to anybody else.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

There isn't an art, really, because it was just it's circumstances that landed me in a position for me to then review what happened or take stock of my life for me to then say, actually, I need to start going back to my roots again and becoming an an authentic artist serving me now, not a group of people, yeah, that's serving me. That's what this does now, it serves me as an individual.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

And you said that moment ignited something. And I actually, when we spoke previously, said you're like a dog with a bone when it came to creating I've got to do it, I've got to do it, I've got to do it.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

So, with that, the work that you're creating, you you found your way back to painting, presumably.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

Yeah, I did.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

What was the thing that took you back to picking up paints again?

Stillness, Self-Initiated Work, And Return To Craft

SPEAKER_00 37:19

I think it was the authenticity, but I what had happened was I'd started to rather than just jump back into painting, I knew that my love for painting um was there from when I was younger. And I knew I wanted to get to that, but I didn't want to just jump in because over the years I have picked up the paintbrush, I've painted and then looked at it and gone, and then several. Sort of like a sporadic paint. Yeah, sporadic, picked it up, painted, been disappointed, and then put it down and then and left it for several years. It's muscle memory. If you don't paint every day, you don't perfect, you don't learn from your mistakes. So, me, my expectation, I'll pick up the paintbrush, I'll be painting like I did when I was 17. No, that doesn't happen like that. It's almost like becoming hench in painting. You have to keep painting in order to become better.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Was it my annual creativity is a muscle, the more you use it, the more you can.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Exactly. That's exactly what happened. Was that frustrating situation to see that you weren't?

SPEAKER_01 38:16

I mean, obviously, you know it in hindsight with the muscle memory, but when you were doing it, were you like, oh, I'm just not happy with this.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

No, I know, I was it was disappointment. So then throw the paper down, several years.

SPEAKER_01 38:27

Self-worth goes out the window. I'm not paying together again.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Yeah, forget that back to art direction. I've got several jobs, I haven't got time for that, and then it's just like forgotten about it for seven years, and then I do it again, and then the same thing happens, and then I'll check it down, and it's just it was just a reoccurring situation. But this time was different, life was different, what circumstance was different, pandemic had happened, and all of that. It gave me enough time to go actually. No, this is really important, Emma, to do this because it's gonna serve you as a person, right? And it's gonna help develop you, feed that soul, feed that part of you that is craving that the the artist within you, feed that artist basically, because that was what was happening. You I just neglected that artist side in me, or that's how I visualize it. That unfortunately there was this poor little artist, I you know, just was there and neglected kind of thing. That's the analogy.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

You neglected yourself as an artist, that's yeah. But I think that's I listen to a lot of stories, it's the same as my story, essentially. You have to find the thing that goes, this puts food on the table.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Yeah, the reality is you don't do that, or you really do that, and you just end up in dire straight, right? And people do, and they go, Well, fuck it, I'm just gonna like the romantic idea of being well, yeah. I'm gonna be broke, but I'm gonna at least I'm happy. But you know, some people are like that. Credit to them for doing that and saying, you know what, I don't need the big salaries and I don't need all of that because I'm happy with what I've got. I've got a paintbrush, I've got some paint, I can paint every day, but I do it for me, and that's nice, that's real ways.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

So you you want to create for yourself and you've dipped in, you've made it a bit less sporadic. Yeah, what are you creating for yourself here at this moment where you're going right getting back into the painting? Is it portraiture, is it self-portraiture, or is it just practice?

SPEAKER_00 40:23

What the actual the what the physical work that I was doing?

SPEAKER_01 40:25

The physical work that you're painting. Now you've refounded painting.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

So if we go back to me starting to paint again, baby steps, I started to draw, and then I did some printmaking as well, and I decided to do different mediums, and I was just skirting around then at that point. I was like, no, come on, every write.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Well, when you're coming back, you're dipping your toe into animation, yeah, yeah. Body design, drawing, painting. You're almost doing your own foundation within the I guess so, yeah, I guess so.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

And that was I'd gone away and I'd done some drawing, I really enjoyed it. I so I bought myself a radial easel, I bought myself all of the equipment that I had when I was 16, 17. I just bought it all again. I was like, I'm gonna rebuy all this stuff, and I did and started doing that again. And then I found some life drawing lessons. So there was a guy, Stephen L. Rogers, fantastic artist, did life drawing with him every Wednesday, and actually he was great and kind of instrument in me picking the paintbrush back up. We became really good friends, we started to talk art for the first time ever. I felt like I was back at university again. Yeah, discussing ideas, yeah, talking in a very academic way about artists' movements. All of this was just pouring out of me from uni. I was like, oh my god, it's just laid dormant, all this stuff. It was so exciting. And talking with somebody who comes from an academic background as well, so we could sit and talk and put the world to rights about in history of art, different movements and stuff like that. He's a portrait artist, so we just gelled straight away. He's a fantastic, hyper-realistic portrait artist, loves Vamia, very different to me. We are polar opposites in the paint world, but I love him, and he's so dynamic. And for like absolute hours and hours and hours, we got chatting and we would talk and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

And would you say that you were feeling more inspired then at this point?

SPEAKER_00 42:20

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 42:20

So getting that joy back of art, talking about art, creativity, painting, being expressive, being dynamic, talking about vermeer, talking about forid, whoever those things are.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

Yeah, absolutely. So it was great because I was put in a situation where I felt like I was just right back at university, sitting amongst artist friends, just talking about paint, nothing more, just simple. And could you feel that want to stop painting just again or it drove me, it really drove me. So I was like, that's it now. So I wanted to get there, but I was kind of like, now don't do what you've done, Emma. Which is remember, you picked up the paintbrush, you painted, you were disappointed, you chucked it down. Let's if we're gonna do this and we're gonna reintroduce painting, let's do it properly. So the art of seeing again, everything that you were taught when you were younger at school, and you know, reintroduce these things again. So that was what I was doing. So I was doing it the right way, I guess. Learn to see properly, learn to draw figuratively and shapes and stuff like that, and positioning and stuff, and the art of drawing the figure and the face and composition with the view to get into painting. So eventually I'd got to that point, and then there was the moment then, and the first painting for me was Stephen JO. That was the first painting I ever did, really, after 20 years of not painting.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

Why that?

Relearning To Paint And Building Momentum

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Okay, so I had also connected with or just started to connect with a group called United Artists of South Birmingham, and they were hugely inspiring, still are inspiring to this day, community basically, of lots of different artists, great network, and it was excellent. I was with them, and it was an opportunist moment, actually. And I was out in King's Heath, and Steve Ajayo, he was he was playing the gig saxophone player, he's an old friend of my dad's as well, and he's just been around for years. Everybody knows Steve Ajao. Yeah, great musician, plays guitar and also jazz and blues and stuff like that. Anyway, yeah, there was something about him, and I was just like, I'm gonna paint you. You're really interesting. Yeah, you're gonna be my first subject. So I did pick him, and I was opportunist moment, he was playing, he'd just finished his gig, and I said, Look, can I take a couple of shots of you with a view to painting you? And he's such a great guy, he's like such a likable guy. And he's like, Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. What so he took these photos like literally off the fly, very candid shots of him, and I took them back to the studio, and also at the same time, I was working alongside with Stephen, and he was in his very kind of indirect way, giving me a couple of comments because he's a hardened portrait art, BP award artist saying maybe we should try a couple of these colour values and this, that, and the other. And we had discussions over colour and stuff like that and tonal range.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

Should we talk about that? Because looking at your work now, it is so bold, so colourful. Yeah, it's just was that translated back then as well? Were you using such extreme colours?

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Yeah, I think it was probably a little bit more formulaic, let's say. It was a little bit more traditional.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

But you were finding your feet again, presumably. You're finding your painting, you're finding your skill set, you're finding your muscle memory. So it's perhaps not going to be as dynamic as you want to.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

No, no, I think very early on, I'd paint the first painting I did, I'd look at it now and go, oh my god, I I'd never want that to see the light of day. It was awful.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

Um you can see the progression, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

But then I just felt like when I look at it now, I look and I think, yeah, I can see where I was. I was still very constrained art director, but I can see really trying to want to be this expressive artist.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

What do you think was holding you back from being that expressive artist?

SPEAKER_00 46:08

I I guess it's just being in a position where when you've been something for such a long time, it's really difficult to take that coat off and put another coat on. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 46:18

Very much so.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

So it's like a stra I was gonna say straight jacket, actually. In some respects, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

I mean, I mean Creative Noeland came out the back of me being a photographer or in the photography industry for 25 years, and I define myself similar to you, yeah, as that person. Yeah, but as two creatives sat having a chat, yeah. There's so much more to us than just one entity or whatever you want to call it.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

So, yeah, I mean, now I mean it's it again at an accelerated race really has been what two or three two, three years that I've gone from chocolate box painting, which is what happened at the beginning, very nice and pretty, but very chocolate box, to now more abstract, more expressive, which is the happy medium that I want to be in, where it's painterly, but it's also got abstraction in it as well. That myth you were talking about. It's got that expression in it, it's got that human touch in it. That's what I like about abstraction. It's about how can I explain it? It's like the imperfections of abstraction. That's what I love. That's what I love about abstract work, it's it's very human. That's what I love about it, and that's why I like to incorporate it into my work because painting is very human. But interestingly, when you're working with different sort of themes like AI, that raises different questions, but there we go, it's a different story.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

But then something pretty poignant happens, right? That stops you painting. You're in the flow, back to this excited creative student, you'll find your feet again, the muscle memory is all coming back. And then, as we said before, the universe has a way of putting stuff in front of us that makes us stop, readdress, force us to stop.

SPEAKER_00 48:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

Do you want to talk about that?

SPEAKER_00 48:04

Yeah, absolutely. I've got so I'd moved back in with mum and got my feet on uh on the ground, and I was finding myself, my own identity, and really sort of coming back to myself again, and doing a lot of things for me, and I'm finding myself, which is great. I'm also at home with mum, which was great, and actually the irony was that back home with mum, but not knowing that mum had got a serious illness. Sorry, mum had got a serious illness, and actually, really, it was like end-of-life scenario for her. Really, we didn't really know that was happening. She didn't either, she didn't know that, and she started to lose a lot of weight, and then yeah, I'd started to see this happen, and it was a matter of over the year or two, it just it got progressively worse, and she ended up passing away. Meanwhile, at the same time, I'd also met somebody as well towards the end of mum's going through all of these issues, and so it was quite a crazy point in my life. I'd got some universe going to be taking something away, presenting you something, giving you the art, but taking away the art. I know, so it was there, so I was painting, and then mum things were going on with mom, and then I'd also met somebody as well. So life was really crazy at that point.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

Did something have to give there? Um you say life was really crazy, and we keep talking about the universe presenting these things. Do you think there was something that had to give there?

SPEAKER_00 49:32

Possibly, possibly. What happened with mom? The fact that she took a turn for the worst, really. We thought that the problem that she had, we thought it was fixable, and it wasn't. They didn't really diagnose the situation soon enough, and before we knew it, really, she was in a situation where it was irreversible, and then that situation really it got progressively worse very quickly, and then all of a sudden she was in hospital, and then all of a sudden, literally five days later, she passed away. Well, no, actually, it wasn't, it was three, something like three days. The whole thing is a bit of a blur to be quite honest.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

Uh but then at that time, I'm six months into a relationship, and yeah, I mean is that strange being the excitements and throes of a new relationship, being grief at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

Yeah, I mean, sideline to like personal situations. Mum passed away, like obviously had all of the grief of processing. I mean, she was literally like it wasn't like a normal kind of mother-daughter relationship. We were like best friends very early on, as I grew up, when I was 17, 18, I was going down the pub and we were having beers. That was the kind of relationship that I had with my mum for years, you know. As I became an adult, we were just great friends, and she was my biggest fan of all of my art and my biggest supporter, really. She supported me through everything because dad passed away when he was 59, 11 years ago. So the emphasis for me and Ben, my brother, was that we'd got mum and we needed to look after mum. Dad had gone, and then the onus was looking after mum. I felt responsible for looking after mom in a certain way, to be quite honest, really.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

And when you lose your biggest fan as a creative, did that so hard. It's that it was just so that is that what stopped you creating, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

Well, no, I think it was just the complete shock of having to re it just turned my life upside down, to be quite honest, because you have this person in your life, you know, and obviously one of the most no, sorry, the most important person in my life, and when they're taken away from you, it just your whole life is just turned inside out, upside down, and that was what had happened. I was in absolute shock for months and months.

SPEAKER_01 51:46

So I could help having your partner alongside. What was that? Sorry, did it help having your partner alongside?

SPEAKER_00 51:51

Oh my god, she was absolutely amazing, she was incredible. She's a nurse, so she's a natural carer, caring person. Dynamically, we work so well.

SPEAKER_01 52:02

She's you know, dynamically amazing what having someone in your corner can do.

Grief, Pause, And The Wonder Series

SPEAKER_00 52:06

Yeah, yeah. So it was amazing, really, that she was there for me, and she really was just absolutely 100% support all the way for me. I couldn't have done it without her, to be honest. That year was a really difficult year. So for me, again, it was one of those years where I just needed to stop, take stock and just get through it. You know, it's stillness again.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

You can't, I mean, I agree with you.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

You can't do anything other than just process the grief. Yeah, it's really hard. For me, painting's really emotional. I throw myself a hundred percent into my paint when I paint, it's an emotional part of me. So to pull that out while I'm grieving, I just hadn't got the emotional capacity to do it basically. That was the long and short of it. I couldn't do it. So for me, it's just like I'm just gonna park it up. I'm not gonna do anything now at this point because I need to look after myself really, and I need to process this grief and just feel the pain and go through it all first. I need to go through this and do what I did, and that's what I did. So I hibernated and took stop through you. So painting was not a thing for me. I needed to stop. There were more important things in life that I needed to deal with.

SPEAKER_01 53:20

But then comes the wonder series.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:22

A series that you've openly written is born from grief, and a way to find your way back to painting.

SPEAKER_00 53:30

Yeah, it was absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

And what's the premise behind the wonder series? Because it holds crafted joy and the ache of looking. Okay, so this is where the whole painter's memory.

SPEAKER_00 53:41

Yeah, yeah. And that's where I think a lot of this story has been carved from that body of work, really, about the ache of looking, and it's based on reflections of memories and looking at grief and processing grief. And the Wonder Series is me processing the death of my mum. But the first painting that I painted, the boy in the red glasses, that was the first thing that I did. It had been over a year, and I'd picked up the paintbrush for the very first time again. There was no big plan of what I wanted to do, other than I just knew I needed to paint for as long as I wanted to, and I knew that it was good for me, for my mental health, really, and that was what it was. I knew what it was doing previously to what happened with Mum. It it was a way of connecting to myself, and it was a way of God, how can I explain it?

SPEAKER_01 54:40

Cathartic.

SPEAKER_00 54:41

Yeah, it yeah, very much.

SPEAKER_01 54:43

But you you just wanted to paint. It wasn't I've got this idea of a series, I've got this idea in my face.

SPEAKER_00 54:48

No, there wasn't so there wasn't any kind of rational, sorry, there wasn't any kind of rationale, there was no big story, big idea. It was literally just paint for painting's sake, for the act of painting, and that's how I started. And I painted the boy in the red glasses, I found a reference image that I was really drawn to. I kind of manipulated the reference, and you can see in it, it's it's very soft introduction back into painting again. There's a kind of a real softness about that piece of work, it's about contemplating even the kind of look and the stance of the boy. I was really drawn to it. I love the premise of the reference, really, that he was gazing out, it was wondrous. What it was about really underneath was that there is hope, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. And so by painting something like that for me, it was helping me see the light at the end of the tunnel. Do you know what I mean? So I'm processing grief now through the act of painting. Wow. So the boy in the red glasses was the opening really into that series, and then from that point onwards, then I enjoyed it. Let's say this idea was in incubation stage at the moment, so still I don't know that this is called the Wonder Series. I haven't even named it yet. I don't even know what this is, I don't even know what I'm really doing, other than I know it's making me feel good. So I do another one and I do another one, and as I'm doing this and as I'm painting these things, I'm slowly connecting, reconnecting with myself again. I'm slowly reconnecting with myself and using colour and using vibrancy, and they're starting to become really exciting. And actually, the expressions they're quite infectious, really. Some of them they've got these big glorious smiles on their faces. When somebody laughs, it's infectious. You laugh, when they laugh, it's that kind of thing. The whole act of painting something like that, it helps you to feel I don't know, it uplifts you. It uplifts you. So then at this point, I was thinking, what am I doing? What am I doing? I'm I'm painting a bunch of people that have got these great expressions and were looking out and then looking to hope and looking to light at the end of the tunnel, and started to realise then because I was doing the same thing again and again, it became methodical then. As soon as I'd painted one and put it down, I wanted to do it again because of the way I felt, and so I was like, I'm doing it again, I'm doing it again, I'm doing it again, and that was what was happening, and actually now I'm feeling better. And the natural progression of bereavement, I'm I'm slowly feeling more myself now. Actually, this is great. This is I'm coming out of this like dark way. You know, it's crazy, really. When people look at them, they're like, they're full of joy. I'm like, yeah, I was in such a dark place. But this is what's interesting. Oh, crazy, eh?

SPEAKER_01 57:35

You create with colour, expression, joy, hope. But that came from like exactly like you say, a very dark place.

SPEAKER_00 57:44

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. It's it's it's uh do you know?

SPEAKER_01 57:47

It's a you're finding your own balance there, am I?

SPEAKER_00 57:50

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 57:52

Joy in the painting, joy in the colour, but melancholy, sadness.

SPEAKER_00 57:55

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 57:56

Trying to just give yourself an even keel.

SPEAKER_00 57:59

Yeah, yeah, there is definitely that happening. Did you ever paint your mum? No, I haven't. No, I will.

SPEAKER_01 58:06

Is that is that I mean, I imagine that's not gonna be a people have asked me that.

SPEAKER_00 58:11

They have.

SPEAKER_01 58:11

I was gonna say that was my first go-to, but I can't imagine that's gonna be an easy process for you.

SPEAKER_00 58:15

No, I yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:17

Do you think that portrait would come across differently now?

SPEAKER_00 58:21

I think it would now. I think I'm strong enough to paint her now. I don't think at the time, as I was going through that, it was just enough for me to get through painting them paintings and what it was serving me. So, what how were they serving me as an artist? How did you feel after 12 hours of painting them up? You for it, great. Do it again? Yeah, okay, let's do it again. So that's how I was doing it.

SPEAKER_01 58:43

And giving yourself hope.

SPEAKER_00 58:44

Yeah, it was good.

SPEAKER_01 58:45

It was it was we forget how important hope is, right?

SPEAKER_00 58:48

Yeah, yeah, and that was that's exactly what those pieces of work do. I think it was like fourth, fifth piecing. I decided at this point that because it was because I was repeatedly producing this what felt like a body of work, I thought, okay, let's package this up. What is this? What is this, Emma? Because that's what I'm about. Explain what this is now. So that's it. So that was it then. I was sitting there memoing like mad, and this is where this is why I'm able to articulate and build the story around the body of work because I have hundreds of hours of memo notes that I can go back to and that I can that I can carve these things and carve the story out of the memo notes, really.

SPEAKER_01 59:34

So, what would you say was the underlying story behind the wonder series? And I know you're gonna say wonder.

SPEAKER_00 59:40

Um, the underlining story finding my way out of grief. That was the underlining story, really. I didn't realise that's what I'd set out to do, but that's what actually happened.

SPEAKER_01 59:52

That artist that you've always been.

SPEAKER_00 59:53

And reconnecting as an artist, really, the artist within. That was what was happening. I didn't know that at the time, but.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:00

From the outside looking in what that's done. You said you were like a dog with a bone before, but it's opened the floodgates now to multiple projects, shows, books, all sorts of things. You've really gone in the last couple of years, hell for leather.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:14

And is this where you come to the space between us?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:17

It is, yeah.

Hope, Colour, And Emotional Recovery

SPEAKER_01 1:00:18

So you've created the Wonder Series, there's a bit more of a body of work, it's a structure, it feels cohesive. And this is where it gets interesting. Because the space between us is beautiful, poetic, lovely. These are very interesting though, aren't they, Emma? Because the references, they're not real people. No, they're not. They're all started from an uh an AI prompt. Yeah. I read the title and I go, oh, these are going to be so beautiful. And they are. But the space between us starts with AI. But each face became a ghost or a suggestion that you could then take to the next level. Can you sort of explain the process behind wanting to get these reference images from AI? What the space between us means, the fact that there's now two people. There's a lot of poeticness about this that I'm really drawn to.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:13

There is. And originally, very early on in the start of this year, I decided that I was going to look at or explore the idea of connection and connection between people. And I also really just wanted to paint multiple people in a composition, not just one. And I and I went away and really thought about it and thought actually I'm going to really have a good think about what I want to do rather than just going in and painting. I really want to think about what I want to portray in this from a connection point of view.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:43

There's a balance of art director, expression.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:46

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:47

Look at my brief, do my research.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:49

I'm doing some background research in what I want to portray in this body of work. I know it's going to be connection, but what am I going to do? And meanwhile, I'm also very much connected or plugged into the world of AI as an art director, using it really in my everyday life as a tool to assist me and make my life so much easier. And it does, which is brilliant. And many people use it that way. It's absolutely great. But the one thing that I'd been watching closely over the last few years is how it's manipulating people's artwork and how it's manipulating just image in general. I was interested to see how this thing is generating images that we as a world have put out there on the internet. Because let's face it, we are the people who have produced this thing. We're the people that have shoveled all the images into the internet, and it's a byproduct of what we've done. That's what it does. It's only sourcing everything from the world, really.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:52

But it's interesting to me that you use when the project is about connection, intimacy, vulnerability in some ways between two people, yet the starting point is not. It's not.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:03

Yeah, but it's it's not though, is it really? So, like for me, I wanted to look at connection. What I did was I took the uh that kind of art direction and I used it as a prompt in AI to create me like my own AI visualization, and at the time it was about two people that were androgynous. That was another thing that I thought was quite interesting. I wanted to use androgyny in my work, I wanted to use people that were not necessarily in the limelight of portraiture or haven't been, and I crafted this prompt and produced this kind of halfway house of yeah, this is getting me somewhere from a reference point of view. I want some chiaroscuro, so ultra-dark backgrounds, reference to Caravaggio, I want all of these different things that are happening.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:49

You were going that deep in the prompt.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:50

Absolutely. I didn't just say, Oh, just make me a couple, oh, that's good. Yeah, I'll just go with that. I absolutely laboured the prompts, but I'm used to being like that because I'm an art director and I that's what I do. It's art direction to the granular detail, and that's what I did with with this prompt. Anyway, it gave me something back. Something like 20-30 iterations later, it'd give me something that was semi-acceptable. Then I had to take it and put it into Photoshop.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:16

What did you see in that AI creation 20 or 30 iterations down the line?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:22

Okay, I wanted the intensity when you look at the two entities in the painting crafted from AI, they are like quite intense. The intensity of the way that they're looking at each other, and also the space between them, there's very limited space, actually. It's almost forced perspective as well, and that's what I've deliberately forced the two kind of people so that they're even closer than they naturally would be. So, in the prompts, the layout of this composition was not like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:56

I've intensified it again, it gives you a starting point because I can absolutely intensify the reference because I've got it to a point now, or I could sit there and direct that in a very traditional way with two people, but there was something quite interesting about using something that juxtaposition of basically you want to create something that is so full of emotion, so full of feeling, but the starting point is an AI prompt. Yeah, and also if you didn't tell anyone, yeah, yeah. The space between us, the title, everything, these are couples that are there's loss, there's intimacy, there's connection, there's love, there's all those things between them.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:33

Yeah, yeah. But the I guess what I'm trying to say is through AR.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:37

Yeah, but the emotion, you and your art, that's the real element.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:41

That's the real element, but it's about pulling the humanity out. People are so worried about this thing, but really they shouldn't be. It's like it will only ever emulate a human. That's the long and short of it. And I guess my response was that I was emulating it back, I was mirroring the AI. So the response is me reflecting what I saw in the AI. That's that blows your mind a little bit, but and what I saw from it was in all these images that I see in AI, there's a lot of emptiness in them. I they never quite get them right, there's still emptiness in them. I think what I was trying to do really was call back the humanity and the human side of things and that whole sort of like that feeling of connection, which I think the world very much needs.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:27

I feel I feel like we all feel so disconnected, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:29

Yeah, and AI does that. AI makes you very disconnected, and when you think of in terms of where we're going to be going now, is that I think predominantly more and more people are going to be using AI in their life to do a lot of things that will serve them as an individual. What happens to that person then when they're not going to their friend or their peer or someone else and just only going to something like AI? That's quite sad that is, and it's quite a lonely state of affairs, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:57

Again, the opposite of connection.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:00

It is, and that's an interesting part in this work because a lot of people don't see that.

The Space Between Us And AI Sources

SPEAKER_01 1:07:06

I do like the way you express it though. Each face became a ghost, and they are, in effect.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:12

It's an emulation, but for me, it's the art of pulling this back to it having a humanistic quality again that it didn't have in the beginning. You know, I spoke to a friend a few months ago and he said something about all this AI stuff, it's taking all our art. And I'm like, imagine if we just reversed it all and said, okay, all that AI stuff we're gonna take from it, and then we're just gonna paint. We're gonna full circle. I'm just gonna whatever it's produced, I'm gonna take it, and I'm gonna emulate you. Exactly, because that's the thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:46

AI hasn't got the story, it hasn't got the soul, it hasn't got any of those things, and I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:51

It has got soul now so much, it's got soul now, whereas it didn't have before, but it still has narrative in it that connects back to the fact that it's a dislocation, and that dislocation is that it was derived from AI.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:06

So interesting. Do you feel there's a difference between painting a real subject for you than there is to painting these AI subjects? Because they're free to be your like you say, they become ghosts or they can be a starting point for your expression. Whereas when you paint a subject that says a real person, yeah, which is quite often, yeah, is that about you? Is that about the subject? Is it about capturing some sort of essence?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:32

I think it's yeah, I think it's a bit of both. So while I was painting this body of work, again I went back to just the joy of painting and just picking up the paintbrush, and one afternoon I decided that I was going to paint my partner, and it was a sort of a Saturday morning, Sunday morning. Just woke up, chilled, and it was off the cuff, and it was what has now become the uh what I see is the impromptu bodies of work that I've done now. So to begin with, it was just an opportunist moment to take a photo, fleeting moment, quick shot of of my partner just waking up, very kind of natural, very different to the space between us, which is all narrative of AI and all removed all of that, and this is just pure painting, a painting of this person that I love, my partner.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:25

What was it in the photograph that you saw that inspired it?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:28

It was like the natural kind of moments that she was just waking up where she wasn't even looking at the camera. Again, those in-between moments. Yeah, those little in-between moments that you see that nobody sees, those moments that people don't even necessarily really pay any attention to, especially in a media-driven world where we're all selfie-oriented, and those little candid moments, those are the moments that I sort out, really look for because those are the authentic moments for me, like you know, that I love painting.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:59

Yeah, and that's the human condition, really, isn't it? It's not the falsities of the cheese, say cheese and smile, because we can all do that in a picture, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:06

Yeah, and what's really happening. So, what was really happening that day was that it'd been one year since her dad had passed away. So that morning, as we were waking up, I took a photo, but also really I wanted to time stamp, and the painting is called Rise because she'd come so far, right? And I'd been through all that the year before, I'd seen and knew, I'd felt it all, and yet all of a sudden, a year later, and her dad's now passed away, and we're dealing with that. Do you know what I mean? So that was Was that hard for you? Yeah, it was really difficult because we're now double processing, double grief now. So it was difficult for us both to navigate that together, you know, and also support each other at the same time. It was really hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:25

To you, you have catharticness of painting though. What does your partner have apart from you to help product that?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:32

For herself, I mean her job is which is hugely rewarding being a nurse, anyway. I know that's what drives her, you know, when she comes back and tells me about days.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:41

And to some extent as a nurse, I imagine she's got some experience with death.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:45

Oh, yeah, exactly. Um, fortunately, yeah, yeah, of course. She's seen all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:50

Was she comfortable with you painting her at that point?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:52

Do you think she's fine, she's happy with me painting her, yeah. This is what I love about her. She's not hung up by how do I look behind the camera? That's what I really love about her. She's very authentic. She doesn't really like or whatever. I took a photo and it was just like it was a moment where I see her, but I really see her. Do you know what I mean? The way I see her every morning when I wake up, and that was what I got.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:20

Real.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:20

You know what I mean when when you take a photo of the first couple of shots, people are a little bit, you know, it takes time to get to warm up to the camera, and then all of a sudden you see it, there's a moment, you're there. You are, there you are. Yeah. And you can pull that person out of the shot. It takes a bit of time, but I wait for that moment. Let's get all of the silliness out of the way. And then once we're like in it, all of a sudden you you see that moment. Then sometimes you don't, and sometimes it takes time, you know yourself. Eventually, you get to a point where it's like, oh, there you are.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:53

But is it more important for your work to be real than it is necessarily flattering?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:59

I think some of them they are beautiful, but yeah, this picture of your partner, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:04

It's not the most flattering shot.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:06

No, so it's looking up at us, it's a bit of an awkward expression.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:10

Absolutely. But it's real, it's real, and I even now when I look back at that now, I look at that shot and I go, I look at the painting, the moment that it captured, which was really important for us as a couple. It's important. I feel like it's almost like having a photo album, but it time stamps a moment in time that I feel like she came so far. This marks the year of her dad passing away. How hard it's been, her life was turned upside down, she went through exactly the same thing I did. I feel her pain. That was why I called it Rise. That kind of stance, that look of kind of like, you've come through this, you've come through this, and you've got through it. Um that's what it was all about. So that day, I honoured that day of painting her. You know, I spent 10 hours painting. You sat there, she sat there doing some creative work, and I sat in my uh small studio at home and I think that's something that I'm drawn to by you and your work.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:08

It feels so real, and it feels so raw, and it feels so emotive. And in an age where everything is so glossy, so veneer, look at all my Instagram highlight, it's all where we question what's real.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:24

I know. Even the art of the photography now behind production when it comes to producing shots for reels and artists producing stuff, even all of that is very glossy, and I'm like, I tr I try not to do that. So when I'm painting, I'll have I want to capture an inside shot of the studio because I feel like I want to show the world what it's like to authentically paint, but I also feel sometimes the camera hinders the situation massively. So there are high points in the work, like moments or milestones, where I think right now is an opportunity to probably capture a moment here, and then I can then carry on concentrating because I can't do the two at the same time, as it just hinders the work, and then it's not authentic anymore. So I will usually take a couple of shots in between. You'll never see me do process shots.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:19

You've got to be a content creator, you've got to be a marketing manager.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:21

Yeah, you've got to do many things, haven't you? But it I feel like it dilates the act of painting, to be quite honest. But then it works for some people, but it doesn't really work for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:30

Do you feel that responsibility sometimes as an artist that you've you've got to get these moments, otherwise you're not promoting yourself in the right way, or this, that, and the other.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:39

A lot of the time I enjoy doing them because I know for me it's almost a visual diary, and what I really like to do is look back at them and go, Oh, yeah, I remember that moment. The book is a visual diary, it's a time capsule.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:52

In your fingers, yeah, I mean, even in your words, yeah, exactly.

Reclaiming Humanity From Machine Images

SPEAKER_00 1:15:55

It's a visual diary, it's a time capsule, which is why I did it to begin with. I was gonna hold off producing the book. I questioned whether I'd got enough work behind me to put it into production and enough to say that's what it was. That was the biggest thing. And I thought, actually, no, as of what I've learned over the past few years, life's quite short, and you never know what's going to happen and what's around the corner. So Emma, do it now. So just do it, don't question it. You want you obviously want to do it, you've got intense, so do it. So I did, and so what started as a little project escalated into a full-blown hardback 72-page book.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:40

But it's absolutely beautiful. I've got to say, what a beautiful timestamp of where you are right now in this prolific couple of years, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:49

And that one I love about it is I know I can go back. It's a bit like a SOSO album for me. That's how it feels. Nobody knows how long you've got left on the planet. I don't want to be doom and gloom, but you don't know how long you've got. So I literally I'm grabbing life and I'm gonna produce this book now.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:06

Is there something about legacy in that?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:08

There is absolutely I was just you know, it's weird you should pick up on that because yeah, there is a lot about legacy, and I think I've got to a point where I've tipped over into 40s now, other than like bearing children, which is what the kind of usual thing is, I suppose. The traditional thing of doing, what are you going to do? Well, for for me at this moment now, this is my legacy, these are my children. Yeah, I feel like I've done a lot of things in my life, but I'm doing things that are very rich now as I've crossed over into my forties.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:42

All roads have led to here, though. Again, we are where we're supposed to be. The universe has a way of saying this is where we are, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:49

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:49

And the book is a beautiful time stamp, but also a legacy of creation that's something that's here when perhaps life gets short.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:00

Exactly. That did go a bit deep, and that was very deep. Sorry. It's your writing it, it's your writing, Emory. It's so beautiful, honestly. It's giving me so many ideas.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:09

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:09

Let's talk about because the space between us, number five, we're jumping around the projects, I know, but the space between us number five was shortlisted for the Women in Art Prize this year, wasn't it? Which is did that give you confidence? Did that give you an idea that the collection's got weight, it's being seen, it's being recognized?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:26

It's so for me, uh submitting that when it landed, I was like, okay, it's resonating, this work is resonating. And you ask any artist what do you want your art to do? You want it to connect. Everybody wants the same thing. If your art is not connecting, what on earth is the point? Yeah, if you're not connecting, or it it demands a response. That's the whole point of it, really. So the fact that it was resonating for me, I was like, okay, I feel like I'm onto something that's not necessarily that I was validating it, it just felt like it was going in the right direction for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:04

Did you feel you needed some sort of validation about what you were doing in terms of art? You've had it from clients and art director worlds.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:12

No, yeah, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:13

I'm interested in that idea of how artists validate.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:16

What is the yeah, it's it is a mad thing. How do you validate for me? It's how I feel, the takeaway feeling from it, really. But yeah, who doesn't like the fact that come on, they'd come back to me and thousands of people had submitted. There was only under a hundred that were shortlisted, and that's just an amazing like for me. I felt like it was an achievement, and that was great because it was right in the midst of me working up to the solo show as well. So I just got so many irons in the fire, but yeah, it the most important takeaway was that it was resonating, the work was resonating.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:52

And what about Space Between Us number five do you think it was?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:56

I think I was mid-flow, and actually, mid-flow work for me, there's an element of just fluidity that actually the work warms up a little bit, it's expressive.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:09

Did you enter any others, or was it only the number five?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:12

No, it was okay. So I deliberately called them hashtag one, hashtag two, very formulaic because of the premise of them being AR. That's the whole point. Yeah. Just the hashtag really was really just a bit of a nod to technology, what we were in.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:29

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:30

It was a it was amusing me, really.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:33

So number five.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:34

Five, five. I felt like I'd really got into the crux of where I wanted to go with this work. I felt like the first few I was playing at it, and they were still a bit too nice. They weren't as provocative as I wanted them to be. They weren't really saying what I wanted them to say. So these are a little bit, there's an edge in them. I'm starting to introduce Sennelier oil sticks. So I'm coming out of my comfort zone now and introducing new mediums into my. So I've looked to give the work some new sort of like dynamic kind of or loosen up in a piece of work. That's an important part.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:19

So can we talk actually about the process, about the initial start of mark making and tone and stuff?

Process, Colour Choices, And Confidence

SPEAKER_00 1:21:24

Absolutely, yeah. I feel like there's a three-part process to the work, really. Well, there's four. There's the drawing to begin with, there's the laying of the foundation, which is predominantly I will use like a burnt umber, or I use, let me be specific to the art people. So I use burnt sienna as a mid-tone. A lot of portrait artists use burnt sienna because a mid-tone, it's mid-ground. You can only get higher in tonal range and darker in tonal range there. The sweet spot is mid and mid-brown, really. So lots of masters of art, Rembrandt, people like that always work in that kind of contrast. Yeah. So I start with that. I do the composition with charcoal, and then I quickly move into using or have just recently started to introduce all the sticks, which have been really great, and it's loosened me up when it comes to painting and instinctively just picking colours up and just working through the work really. For me, it's deliberately trying to just be expressive on the onset. So the premise is be expressive when you enter this piece of work now. Express yourself. So using the oil sticks, I'm free-flowing now, just literally moving the oil stick around wherever it takes me. I'm going along lines that I've produced in the composition, and I'm deliberately, I'm not even thinking about it, I'm just literally laying down line work now, and just yeah, mark making. Just mark making, really. And that opens you up then to be quite fluid when it comes to producing the painterly section, which is like the part two stage of the process of the painting, where I get down to the nitty-gritty granular level of okay, what colour ranges am I using now when I'm painting the base? And those can tip up into different colour ways. I'm quite happy to work in greens. In fact, I could talk for many hours about why there are greens, why there are blues, why there are crimsons in in the face, why there are greys. But you know, the reds, there are many different colours in the one thing that I really know in painting that I see the artists like really grasp the understanding of good colour, throwing greens and blues in there, and colours that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see in the face, but yeah, they are there, they are there, and it's believable.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:48

And that's what part of the thing that helps your work stand out, I think the bold nature of the colours and the choices that you make with the colours.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:54

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really important. Paint with conviction. Paint with conviction, yeah. If you're gonna make a mark, you're gonna suggest something. How do you suggest, say, like the jawline in just one or two marks? I've heard many people say this over the years. How do you do that? What decisions are you gonna make? Because that's what I'm doing. I'm not painting like it's not like a hyper-realistic when they when people paint from a hyper-realistic point of view, they paint incrementally in subtle, very subtle shifts in colour tone. Me, I'm just like, it's quite brash actually. It goes from one colour to another colour to another colour. It's just very and and I I deliberately do that. I think it makes it hugely exciting. I think that's actually what looking at now at the space between us, hashtag five, that's exactly what's happening there as well. It's just making quite a bold move, there's confidence in the painting.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:50

You're confident as an artist?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:52

Can be.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:53

You don't seem to suffer from much. I mean, I we all do, but a lot of other artists I speak to, there's a lot of imposter syndrome, there's a lot of linguistics. I know there can be, but I don't get that from you, Emma. As I say, I feel like you are very confident in I think it's taken me time to get to this.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:09

I think when I was in my twenties, I felt like I hid behind a kind of bold, brashy ego, but actually, I think underneath it all I was I was quite we all wear masks, yeah, exactly. And then uh I think I've got to a point where I'm just comfortable in my own skin.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:24

How would you describe yourself, if someone was to ask?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:27

I think I'm quite a deep person.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:30

Well, I I agree completely. The way you write definitely shows that I can relate to that. I've got those dark, deep elements perhaps some people are a bit shocked by, and we have to go, oh yeah, I'm I'm quite deep.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:42

Yeah, but I laugh because I know how deep it is, and then I get some people who aren't necessarily who just want to be happy go lucky, and they're like, I didn't really want to hear all that.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:51

Oh man, yeah, I can relate. There's certainly an element where ignorance is bliss. Sometimes it looks like a sometimes it looks like a really great place to be. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:00

I I find myself quite often like, you know, but then I I think it's part of the job in my day-to-day, having to justify my every move, choices of colour, tones, why, this, that, and the other, and rationalise everything to the absolute but do you feel like some of the stuff that we've spoken about before, the universe putting us into situations, it's education, it's growth, it's things you learn about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:24

And a lot of people won't address the insular stuff, they just go no no, it's fine. But I feel like as a deep thinker, you you know yourself quite well.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:32

I think I I feel like I do, yeah. I feel like I do. I feel like I've really done a lot of kind of I think probably over the last six or seven years, some really kind of reflection kind of work on myself. So in my 20s, it was all about going out and being mad and going out on the scene and going drinking, all that kind of stuff. Lots of crazy nights out.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:58

What would be a word that you think would describe your current situation?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:02

I think I'm just quite humble now.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:05

I was gonna say there feels like there's some peace there. There is some chaos.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:09

I think there is peace now. I I think I have found my own peace, but I mean it's taken 44 years to get to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:19

But I think that peace gives has given you the confidence to really in the last few years push hard. Yeah and go for the art.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:27

To give me a focus, yeah. I think a peace has given me focus and clarity.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:33

There's a lot to be said for just having some peace.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:36

Yeah, it's time to think, though, and just stillness has been important throughout your Yeah, it has.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:42

In those moments you find those next steps.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:45

Yeah, absolutely. So there was a gap in between the Wonder series. I went into incubation. I was talking about this the other day. It's funny that around about now, for the past few years, I found myself just not painting in the winter, and then when it's spring and everything starts to come back to life, I come back to life, and then when it's winter and everything's dormant, I'm dormant. Whether that will happen this year, I don't know. Can I ask you a personal question?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:10

What time of year did your mum die?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:13

Um, it was April. Yeah, I mean we were just coming into spring and things were just starting to come back to life. Oddly. But yeah, I I had a break. So over Christmas, I had a break of not painting, the wonder series, and then I picked everything back up in spring this year. But I'd had a nice few months of doing nothing. I think it's really important for artists to not do anything for a certain so there are points in your life, like some artists are like, I've got to keep doing work, I've got to no the moments when you don't do anything, the quiet moments that we're we're talking about right now, those are the times that are so important. They inform the next stages, like you've just said, absolutely. Without having those moments, you just end up in this churn of doing the same thing quite often. I think what happens is if you stop, come away from it, allow yourself to just refresh, you'll come back at it at a different angle. Had to do that, being an art director, something's not working, that's not working. Let's stop, let's recalibrate, let's have a few days away from it. If the project permits, we'll come back to it, let's have a look at it with a fresh head, fresh eyes, new day, whatever. And you do them quite often, it will be better work for it as well. So I believe in that time. That downtime is really important to people. I I think I would say to artists out there that it's hugely important to have downtime. Don't see that time as time that you're not doing anything. That time is the time when you are doing something because you're formulating and incubating ideas right there. Those are the ideas, those are the most important, those seeds of information, those are the points there that are going to inform the work. The doing is the doing, but the seeds are the most important part, that's where the magic happens.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:58

When you're in that quiet time, do you actively go and look for inputs, or are you just trying to sit back and let them the things come to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:06

I think I'm just being.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:08

That's it. That's very hard in this day and age of just being.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:11

Yeah, and just doing life. I'm just doing life in between those moments, right? You know, coming away from thinking creatively. Because really everything is an experience of life, isn't it? Art is a reflection or an experience of life, really. So that you need to go off and experience life in order to then feed it in order to then continue to tell your story through art. If you don't do that, then you're gonna run out of narrow. Narrative, aren't you really? So you should allow yourself to come away to just do life, come back. Agreed.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:43

I think if you want an artistic life, you've got to live a life.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:48

Yeah, absolutely. Well, what's in the work? What is that work then?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:53

And it is so emotive, isn't it? Your work and expressive. And I look at it and there's search for connection, intimacy, meaning. I have to have people on the podcast that I'm drawn to the work, not only the boldness, the vibrancy, the style, because it is it's a distinct style. But there is there's something those in-between moments, the intimacy, the connection in your work. That was what drew me in that I found interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:20

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:22

Connection is never finished, neither is painting. Another one of your beautiful quotes.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:27

Paint lingers. Yeah, I mean that's it, you know, there's an interesting way of looking at it, really. I don't think it I don't think it ever really stops, to be quite honest. And I think for me, uh that painting sits as it is and it just lives its life. People ask me when do you know when do you know when to stop? Okay, when the feeling's right with the piece of work, naturally it just kind of comes to an end, really. But then it's now got its new lease of life as being a painting that tells a story or a moment in time, you know.

Real Moments, Vulnerability, And Truth

SPEAKER_01 1:31:57

And as in it's now got to go and share its story with the viewer. Yeah, yeah. For them to make whatever their idea of what the painting is. Because even just the name, the space between us, you just look at these characters and just that's what we're all as humans doing, looking for connection with fellow human beings, right? Yeah, absolutely. That's what the podcast is about, trying to connect and tell stories and tell that reality.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:21

Yeah. You know, I mean, the business, uh you say some Auto, primarily one of the core services is telling brand stories, and we say we are curators of brand stories. We tell the story of a brand, of a company. Tell your story. Lots of brands really struggle, lots of people really struggle to tell their story. The world wants to hear your story. The world wants to hear your authentic story, not a sugar-coated story, but your story. Because those are the things that connect people, the real things. The point I'm trying to get at really is that over the years I've done that kind of prognosis. What's the prognosis? It's like being a doctor, learning to tell a story or unraveling that story with an individual, and I take that practice and I channel that into this work as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:15

What chapter of the story are you on?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:17

I don't know, connection? Yeah, I think I'm still chipping away at the connection side of things with me. I think for a long time I feel like I maybe lost touch with myself, hamster wheel, lost sight of things that really do make me tick as a as an individual, or the authentic side of me. So reconnecting with myself. So I think the chapter now is the n or the next few chapters is where's that going? Why? How can it be improved?

SPEAKER_01 1:33:47

And what does that look like? You mentioned another show.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:50

Yeah, yeah. So partnering up now is the fellow artist Tara Harris, who produces these otherworldly landscapes. Feel like a kind of a line, really, with her. We're cut from the same cloth, basically. So I think we're kind of we we've got the same kind of outlook on life, pretty much. Can you say more about that?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:11

What what is your outlook on life, Emma?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:14

Telling the story in a really honest way, transparency and connection and authenticity. Yeah, because everybody's everybody wants to be authentic. Everybody wants to be authentic, but it's truth, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:28

And like we live in a society of just absolute no truth, you know, many shades of of oh I feel like we're all living a lie to a certain extent, so expressing our truth is scary, vulnerable.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:44

Yeah, well, it shows the vulnerability. That's the thing. I mean, for me, the biggest point was a lot of the time is showing vulnerability in work, it's really hard, but actually there's truth in that. So you've just actually nailed it for me, to be quite honest. That's the reason why I'm working with Tara, because she has the same truth in her work, and there's vulnerability, and there's a search with her for truth, and it's the same with me. So, like with her work, it's landscapes and otherworldly things, and she's developed this kind of body of work now that's absolutely crazy. She paints every single night, it's amazing, and she's got so much energy. I just feel very aligned with where we are right now. So we've decided to come together and produce a show in the summer, and I think it will be a really interesting show. We've called the show Collision. So we've got a scene.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:41

Does that give you a starting point then?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:42

Yeah, that gives us a great starting point because it it ignites the idea. So the idea is that we plan to do some work that will encapsulate the idea of colliding. So, what does that look like between me and Dara?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:57

Stay tuned, we'll all find out, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:59

I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:00

What have we not spoken about, Emma? Is there anything that you feel that is integral that we've that I've missed? Or apart from the future collaboration show, what do the next few chapters of your story look like? Do you have them planned out, or are you very much like let's just see what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:20

I don't have a plan, and even if I did have a plan, it would change. That's one thing that I've learned actually over the years that don't bother making a plan, it changes every second.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:32

With your toes half in the art direction world and having a brief and having an end goal and looking backwards, all those things. In life, you can't no, no, no, of course. I just wondered whether that was uh in your art terms, there is no plan.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:44

There's no, there's no particular plan. I think I'm just enjoying the ride at the moment. I'm enjoying where I'm at. I feel very comfortable where I'm at. I've got no agenda to do or go or be anything in particular, other than I'm really quite enjoying painting at the moment, and that's fulfilling me. That's what's floating my boat at the moment, painting and delving into all different types of mediums and stuff like that. So that's the plan. Um yeah, I will just take wherever it goes, I will just I will go with the to be quite honest. If I on reflection now, looking over the last three years, on it, I'm like, I can't believe I've done what I've done. It's almost like I've accelerated.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:26

Yeah, I feel like you have. I feel like you've you've had you've had a handbrake on for a long time, and then someone's gone, Emma, if you just click this button. But again, I think we are where we're supposed to be. You've been through so much that has allowed you to grow, gain strength, gain character, gain story. That's given you the confidence, it seems, right? I can see that. And just because it's happened fast, it's always been there.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:52

Yeah, yeah. I think it has always been there. I just think it needed a moment, and I think the pandemic was moment enough, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:59

That was a only that, not only that, I think there's been lots of moments that have given you catalytic action.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:05

Yeah, there have been, leading up to there's been a lot of things that have led up to this moment in time.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:11

Um you don't have a plan. Do you believe the universe has a plan? We've spoken about how the universe has presented things in our past, you and me, and most of us, we all get presented with things that we have to address, have to deal with, have to work through.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:26

I think deliberately the universe doesn't have a plan the same. I think that's probably why I align like that, because take each day as it comes, to be quite honest. If the universe was human, it would be exactly the same. It would just it it takes each day as it comes. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:43

Take each day as it comes. That seems like a great place to sort of close out, really, doesn't it? Because I think we all do worry so much about the future a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:53

And well, this is the thing, and like I say, this is what I've some pretty kind of traumatic things, I guess, have happened over the past few years, which have just allowed me really to have a different viewpoint on life.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:04

But that takes resilience from yourself because a lot of people could crumble under some of these harder situations. But actually, for you, it seems like you've grown, you've learned, you've gained confidence, you've become stronger. Of course, yeah, I have gained strength, confidence, resilience, all those things. I think that's a beautiful place for us to pull all this together. Emma, we do have a closing tradition on the Creative Nobeland podcast where we ask you to give us a quote, something that resonates with you, but also someone in your network that you think would be an interesting guest to come on the podcast in the future.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:39

Stephen L. Rogers. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:41

Um unfortunately, Ava has already suggested him. Oh no. So um, I'm gonna have to push you for someone else.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:48

Okay, all right then. Oh, finger in the egg, Tara Harris. Tara Harris, okay. Yeah, she's got an amazing story.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:56

Perfect. Well, if she's got an amazing story, we'd definitely like to have her on the podcast. And go on then. Have you got do you have a quote or something that sits that we can leave the Creative Noeland listeners something that resonates with you?

Legacy, The Book, And Recognition

SPEAKER_00 1:40:10

Yes, I do actually. So there is a guy, an illustrator called Frank Ape. And just recently I've seen some absolutely amazing illustrations. So it's like a bit of a comic strip and he's scribbled all this weight on top of this. It's an ape basically that's holding the weight of the world. And the question is, what does art do? And in the one scene, he's holding the weight of the world, and in the next scene, he's free because he's released himself because he's painted, and all of the weight of the world then is released through his painting, and the whole question is about what does art bring to you. And when I saw that, I was like, so simple but so good at the same time. Like, you've just told such a great story in just two scenes, absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:59

So come on then, Emma. What does art mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:02

Freedom.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:03

Great. I think that's a bloody perfect place to end it. Art for you is freedom, and I'm sure it is for a lot of other people. Emma, thank you so much for being on the podcast. This has been really interesting. It's been a pleasure. Your work is stunning, and thank you for being part of the Creative Nobelland community now.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:20

Cheers, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:22

Thanks for listening to the Creative Nobeland podcast. If you found anything in this episode useful or inspiring, please consider subscribing or sharing it with a friend. You can also help the podcast by clicking the support the show link in the show notes or by grabbing yourself something from the Creative Noeland shop. And here's the bonus. When you join the community through our website, you'll get a special discount code that gives you free shipping on all orders. So, before you buy anything, be sure to join the community. Every bit of support helps us keep sharing these inspiring stories. So, thanks again for listening, and until next time, explore, inspire, and create. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing, and a long life is better than a miserable way.