Degree: BA Painting
University: UAL Wimbledon
Graduation Year: 2021
Emma Phillips is an emerging British artist whose work offers a compelling exploration of the British landscape and cultural identity. Her paintings and drawings capture a sense of ambiguity and tension, blending the familiar with the unsettling.
Phillips' artistic approach is characterised by her use of a cool, subdued colour palette that evokes the melancholic beauty of Britain's natural scenery. She skillfully incorporates imagery from diverse sources, including literature, film, and personal memories, to construct atmospheric compositions that hover between nostalgia and unease.A notable aspect of Phillips' work is her treatment of the natural world as a central character, portraying it as both comforting and menacing. Her sparing use of figurative elements, often partially obscured or absorbed into shadows, creates moments of quiet tension that draw viewers into her enigmatic narratives.
Phillips is an exciting emerging artist to invest in due to her unique artistic vision, technical skill across multiple mediums, and growing recognition in the art world. Her work addresses pressing themes such as environmental change and cultural identity, demonstrating conceptual depth. With accolades like the Prunella Clough Painting Prize, a solo show at Broadway Gallery, and inclusion in the Royal Society of British Artists collection, Phillips shows significant potential for artistic growth and increasing value in the art market.
I am a British artist and curator living and working in East London, with a BA in Painting from UAL Wimbledon. My practice addresses psychologies of space, and the landscape as narrative, seeking to retell stories embedded in the land through painting, whether these be personal, mythological, or ecological, serving to bring out the sense of awe, divinity, or darkness of a landscape that is becoming increasingly homogenised, mundane, and devoid of wildness and wonder.
Combining imagery from my lived experience with references to classic literature and film, I question the tensions that arise between popular representations of the land and its present reality, as well as the role of landscape painting in shaping these understandings of place and cultural identity.
(2023) Gloaming, Broadway Gallery, Hertfordshire
(2024) Papercuts, Aberystwyth School of Art, Aberystwyth
(2024) This is Earthly Stuff, AMP Gallery, London
(2023) Down the Garden Path, Safehouse 1, London
(2023) Shapes and Things, AMP Studios, London
(2022) The Letchworth Open, Broadway Gallery, Hertfordshire
(2022) Soft Earth, Espacio Gallery, London
(2021) Memento Mori, AIR Gallery, Manchester
(2021) Final Notice, Wimbledon College of Art, London
(2020) Xhibit 2020, UAL, Online
(2018) RBA Rising Stars, The Framers Gallery, London
(2018) Oaklands Auction 2018, St Albans Cathedral, Hertfordshire
(2018) 301st Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London
(2023) Broadway Gallery Bursary Prize
(2020) Prunella Clough Painting Prize
(2018) RBA Rising Stars
(2024) Mawddach Residency