“The painting is only done when it starts talking back to me, like it has become more than me.”
Can we ever really know what is happening inside our minds? One artist delving into the complexity of the human consciousness is Surrey-based painter Emma- Leone Palmer, whose hypnotic Afterglow collection explores our intimate thoughts through an electric entanglement of oil paint and swirls of light. “This is where I am most me,” explains the former Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year contestant. “It’s where I thrive and feel most alive. Everything else feels like white noise. Art rekindles memories and expresses who we are.” Emma’s passion for figurative painting blossomed after she moved to Umbria in Italy, where she worked in a studio once used
by the High Renaissance painter Raphael. She has since painted the film star Richard E. Grant, and her work is also owned by the British Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies. To create her celestial pieces, Emma allows her subjects to interact organically with pliable lighting strips and neon wires. Using colours similar to infrared photography, she captures the futuristic otherness of the body by exploring each figure’s connection with energy. “I knew I had to experiment and play in a new way,” she says. “Be naked, be vulnerable, strip it back, change it up. I’ll never create ‘background art’: my work is for feisty people who have something to say.”
H elike Original Oil on Box Canvas Image Size 120cm x 170cm £9,950 Framed
FINE ART COLLECTOR SPRING/SUMMER 2020 37
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