Degree: Fine Art Painting
University: University of Brighton
Graduation Year: 2023
Emily Maguire's flowers are voluptuous, vibrant, spilling off canvases in a wild array of colour, texture and movement. Used as 'grounding components', they are a constant in her work, articulating a deep connection to nature, a representation of femininity and a link to the safe nostalgia of childhood, the comfort of memory and feelings of continuity. The floral imagery also acts as a means of articulating the unsayable, vivid emotions involved in the process of coming into womanhood, a blossoming, flourishing rush. The forceful, swirling brush strokes and lush fleshy tones recall the works of Georgia O'Keefe. Shapes present themselves, forms appear, before they are subsumed back into abstraction, where we see oranges, the small, tight bud of a white rose, vague shapes that could be faces. These are emotional, expressive works that embody the keen yearning of young womanhood and the big emotions engendered by memory.
In my work, abstraction and figuration make playful accord, where the flower motif exists as the grounding component, and abstraction exists as the aftermath. Through my painterly renderings I commit myself to explore the possibilities of the flower and freeing it from its familiar contexts, creating an image that goes beyond something recognisable. My energetic arrays of sweeping and excessive application of vivid colour aim to evoke more than the literal representation. The distinction between the real, the decorative, and the imaginative become blurred, where the motif becomes the key to articulating emotion. I allow it to transform into an extension of my identity, as a young woman flourishing into adulthood. The flower pays homage to my farming heritage, where my inherent affinity with nature materialises in an array of romantic colours and gestures. My sources belong to the days spent in antique shops with my mother, where we would pursue in search of novelty objects decorated with floral imagery. Within these items, the perishable flower turns permanent, fixed in a timeless entity. My work aims to explore the same idea, using oils to mimic life, preserving its beauty. I paint to flirt with death.
(2023) Aidan Threlfall Award