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 predominantly addresses psychologies of space and our complex relationships with the British landscape and culture. Collecting imagery from film, literature, personal memory, and drawings from life, I create intimate, atmospheric paintings that float ambiguously between the eerie and the nostalgic, allowing strange new narratives to play out within familiar spaces, from the crumbling outskirts of London, to pastoral scenes from classic literature.
The natural world is centred as a distinct and omnipresent character in the work, demonstrating its potential as both a comforting and menacing force, inviting mischief, anguish, and promiscuity. I predominantly work within a cool, subdued palette, speaking to the understated beauty and melancholy of the British landscape, as well as the dark undertones of Britain's history and current political landscape. Figurative elements are also used sparingly, with bodies cropped, partially glimpsed, or absorbed into shadow, directing the viewer to moments of quiet tension.
My practice intertwines ritual and magic with grit and decay, reflecting a country that clings to its past while facing an uncertain future.
(2023) Gloaming, Broadway Gallery, Hertfordshire
(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