elhvisual@outlook.com

About

Emma Louise is a fine artist and art historian living and working in London.

Selected Exhibitions

Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours / September 2020 - winner of the Schminke Prize

The Pastel Society Annual Exhibition / February 2020

‘Thinking Graphite’, Drawing Projects UK / December 2019 - February 2020

Society of Women Artists Annual Exhibition / September 2019/2018

Sunday Times Watercolour of the Year / September 2019

‘Out of Darkness’ (Lumen Crypt Gallery, St. John on Bethnal Green, London) / July 2019

‘Drawing Strength’, Monsalvat (Victoria, Australia) / November 2018 - January 2019

LIFE (co-curator and exhibition), Wimbledon College of Arts / May 2018

The Art of Making Sense, Chelsea Triangle / May 2018

Speaker, ‘Linda Nochlin (1931-2017) In Memorium’ / April 2018

CCW Cross-College Exhibition, Chelsea Cookhouse / April 2018

Against Static, Wimbledon College of Arts / March 2018

TIME + NARRATIVE, Wimbledon College of Arts / December 2017

Hesketh Hubbard Society Annual Exhibition, The Mall Galleries / August 2016; 2017

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Distinction, MA Drawing, Wimbledon College of Arts

First Class, MA History of Art and French, the University of Edinburgh

Mercers’ Arts Prize Winner

 

Artist Statement

I am an artist and art historian concerned with access and narrative within institutions. Using drawing, extensive note-taking and art-world criticism I attempt to interrogate grand narratives that are simultaneously discredited and perpetuated.

My research explores the connection between the copy and the embodied act of copying drawings, and theories of experiential learning.

Theories of the embodied mind conclude that mind and body should not be considered as separate and that bodily experience can be considered a cognitive process. (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, p. 97.)  A drawing therefore can record both a physical and mental process. As argued in ‘The Thinking Hand’, a drawing of a tree, for example, ‘does not reproduce the tree as it manifests itself in the objective reality: the drawing records the way the tree is seen or experienced.’ (Pallasmaa 2009, p. 92)

Copying can therefore be a powerful tool to make art and art history accessible. My sketchbooks are a key area to explore my own subjective and critical responses to an objective art history that only displays resolved works. 

My recent research has focused on the hidden lineage of draughtswomen within art history. Frustrated by the absence of exemplars by ‘master’ draughtswomen to copy, and therefore learn from, I use my own practice to expose this lacuna while attempting to fill this narrative gap in art history.

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