A Seat At The Table

An abandoned dinner party in the clearing of a forest, a cake tray set over a steaming bath, two nude women sharing a table of desserts, the corner of a kitchen loaded with chopped herbs. These mundane domestic settings are infused with decadence and a sense of the uncanny. Who are we to look into such private moments? These tableaux of intimacy, this scenery of the un-home. With foods so fleshy and sensual, are we actually meant to be here?

In this conversation with editor, Sasha Gattermayr, Emma shares her thoughts on intuition, visual storytelling and an aesthetics of the weird.

‍SASHA: So let’s start with the basics. When did you start painting and how did you learn?

EMMA: I’ve always been, my whole life as far as I can remember, drawing and doodling. But I think I started ‘painting’ painting about five years ago. It was really not a practice, it was just something I knew I liked, but over the last two years I started really getting into it. I’m self-taught, and that’s when I’d say I really started genuinely making the effort to teach myself.

S: How did you even know what kind of questions you had to ask?

E: I didn’t really and I think that’s why it was so on-and-off for so long, because I would get so frustrated with myself. I was just trying to paint anything and [the artworks] would end up as flat, lifeless things. In the end it was really just through looking and observing, using all my senses rather than technique.

S: It sounds very intuitive, like you’re testing out all these different routes rather than purposely setting out to research the answer to a question.

E: Yes it is, and I think that’s why my process is hard to explain because it’s not structured learning. I went through a life drawing phase a few years ago and I followed up one of my teachers for a painting lesson. I had one lesson with him and I didn’t paint for months after that because what he was trying to show me was so overwhelming. He would say, ‘Here’s the colour pyramid’ and ‘You must shade like this and you must do that if you want to get this’. It was the kind of learning that I just can’t connect to at all. I have to feel it out.

S: It’s so terrifying when all of a sudden this thing you’ve done so naturally has all these rules imposed on it and you think, ‘Hang on, all that stuff that never mattered before all of a sudden matters.’

E: Exactly. I listen to so many podcasts with artists and sometimes they say things about technicality and skill that I can’t even comprehend. But then I also listen to so many other artists who are established and have studied and now they’re saying, ‘I’m trying to unlearn everything that I was taught’. I’m kind of at a stage now where it’s exciting not to know all that stuff.

S: I think learning through podcasts is an interesting concept. It’s the oldest form of education, learning from someone else rather than an institution, so listening to a person talk you through their perspectives is a much more organic, flawed, realistic understanding than you get from formal rules.

E: I listen to writers’ podcasts as well and I find that helps so much, equally as much as listening to artist podcasts. They say ‘let your rough draft be what it is and know that you can trust yourself to make it into what it’s going to be, don’t perfect along the way’. That has resonated with me so much with painting; it’s always a mess at some point and then you go back through and layer it. They’re such different practices but I listen to writers just as much as artists and it’s so helpful.

S: Do you listen while you paint?

E: Yep, especially during lockdown I’ve found that it’s nearly all podcasts whereas before I had my music days and I would alternate. Now it’s just podcasts and audiobooks, nonstop.

S: You have to keep yourself company.

E: I definitely zone in and out. When I’m doing something tricky or something that I need to focus on then I’m for sure not listening but when I’m in an easy phase or something that I’ve done before, like cakes and creams that I’m so comfortable with now, then I’m painting and listening at the same time.

S: That’s so cute that cakes and creams are something you’re really comfortable with. Do you have a method for painting flavour?

E: I don’t know if I do! I do know that when I’m painting a lemon or a sliced orange I don’t look at photos. Even though it’s something that obviously exists and I’ve seen before, I’m imagining it and remembering it or I’m thinking of the feeling of an orange when it’s sticky and because of that, it comes through better. Thinking of the orange’s stickiness while I’m painting is better for me than thinking ‘What does an orange look like?’

Again, it’s super intuitive. I have a lot of ideas and I follow them along and eventually I think, ‘What’s the feeling of this painting?’

S: Is it important for a scene to have a mood like that?

E: I don’t start a painting thinking, ‘This is what I want it to feel like’, but while I’m going I feel more attuned to what the mood needs to be as it’s coming together. And then, as that’s happening, more than mood I’m thinking about narrative.

For instance, while I was finishing All To Myself, once I added the boots and lingerie it changed things. As I’m painting it I’m thinking, ‘This scene feels pleasurable and it feels nice’ and maybe it’s a woman who has this place to herself, but then it’s also eerie. There’s a slice cut out of the cake but no one’s there, so is that really what it is? Is a man about to go in there and he’s putting the outfit on? Or is it something else entirely? Is it a safe space? Do you want to go there?’

I’m not ever really thinking about answering those questions for someone else, but I am thinking about prompting them. I would love for someone to be looking at it and making up their own story.

S: A bit like how Hockney paintings often have the suggestion of human presence when there isn’t someone in the scene.

E: Obsessed, yes. And I guess that’s what I’m thinking of. When I’m looking at a work, if the painting was a bit bigger, there could be someone standing right there where the viewer is standing, and that makes it interesting. Who are they? Is anyone there or is it an empty space? Are we waiting? I read a lot as well, so thinking of it like that really excites me rather than wanting it to look this certain way.

‍S: What books do you like reading?

E: I’m a real blend and I go through phases, I’m in a big fiction phase at the moment. I love a good, well-written psychological thriller by a female author. But lately I’ve been getting into sci-fi books and I love biographies: musicians or artists or writers. I don’t know if I directly draw inspiration when I’m reading a book - I’m not actively thinking about painting while I’m reading - but I think because you’re using your imagination and you’re creating images when you’re reading it’s naturally doing something to your creativity.

S: Definitely, and I think it’s forming your sense of plot and narrative and character. It influences all of that.

E: Do you know that artist Toyin Ojih Odutola? She is so dedicated to a narrative. She did an exhibition called A Counterveiling Theory where she put so much time and energy into creating an entire myth and entire cultural system, and then created all these paintings to tell this very in-depth story. It’s so fascinating and I’m not doing it justice, but it’s insane the amount of thought she puts into it: women ruling the world, certain class systems in this futuristic vibe. For me, I’m at this very early stage of being excited by having a narrative in the painting and hoping that people get a little sense of it, whereas where she’s at, and those kinds of projects, that is it. It’s amazing.

S: Is an enveloping world like that the kind of thing you’re aiming for?

E: It’s where I would love to go. I want my painting to get to a point where it’s more than sitting down to do one work; it’s more like research to create a story of my own and then have a body of work or multiple paintings. That’s a different kind of art for me. I imagine it would be like writing a book or making a movie or writing a script: another realm that would be so fulfilling and exciting. I hope future me can do something like that.

S: Speaking of world-building, you’ve found this really unexpected audience online for your paintings. How did that happen?

E: Yes it was very unexpected. I can’t really explain it, I’m still surprised. It just happened at a really crucial time where I didn’t have much going on on my Instagram at all and I wasn’t posting that regularly because I wasn’t very confident and then all these food-focussed people started following me.

‍S: Why do you think it was your food painting that captivated people?

E: It started when I did two paintings of Laila Gohar’s cooking. I usually always paint from imagination, but when I need some art therapy I just look at a photo and paint that. She had a fish (maybe a salmon or a trout) and onions cooking in a pot and I painted them in bed one morning. I didn’t think they were that good but posted them anyway, and then she re-shared it to her Instagram and I got a big influx of followers.

I think that she sees food the way she sees art. She’s sculpting food and she’s making these creations which are so unusual and almost surreal, and I feel like the people that connected with that have then connected with my work because they’re the kind of people that appreciate that crossover. I think the people who like my food paintings don’t just like food in a standard sense; they have that deep appreciation for cream that looks a certain way or a cake that has this kind of posture.

S: That’s why your paintings are such portals because not only are they building narrative and food and suspense and everything else, they’re bridging creative avenues that aren’t always connected. You’ve got art, you’ve got food, you’ve got plot. I definitely see the link between yours and Laila’s aesthetic perspectives.

E: I don’t think I’m the same level as Laila Gohar, let’s not say that. But I guess it’s what the audience is open to, what they’re looking for and what they’re appreciating. There’s a similar vein.

‍S: So there’s obviously an aesthetic link and a narrative link for you to food. Do you think that the dishes you paint stand in for humanness as well? The food has been made by someone, it’s been arranged by someone with the intent to, at one point, consume it...

E: I’ve never properly thought of it in that way but yes. I guess that’s why I always go back to food as a connection point and it’s always there, because it is so universal. We all eat to survive but we also often share food or we cook food or we’re touching food or we’re growing it. It’s exactly what you said, there’s not a human there but there clearly has been and there will be. It speaks to the intimacy of food preparation or the sharing and not-sharing. Why has it been left out? That also explains why the paintings still have life when no one’s in them. They don’t feel empty.

S: I think it’s care too. We take so much care in preparing and presenting food even when it’s just for us. It’s an act of nourishment and I think that art is too. It has to be.

E: I like that sometimes you can make the food a little bit weird. I’ve done paintings where it’s a nice setting, like a dinner in the forest, but when you look closer there’s eggs cracked over a salad and a raw fish and no chairs at the table, and none of it is really weird, but it’s not really what you’d be preparing for your friends.

S: It’s a personality.

E: I hadn’t ever thought of it as a character in itself but it is, when you say it like that.