Bedlam Painting

Emma Irma Johansen was born in Lithuania and spent half of her life in Denmark. From a very young age she was obsessed with painting, drawing, cutting, sewing, and creating and later went on to study fine arts, costume design, design technology & patterns, and sustainable fashion at college. Emma works with and combines different methods and mediums to show the beauty behind different physical structures, looking deeper and portraying more than what can be seen with the naked eye. Emma draws inspiration from traveling, conveying onto canvas her unique observation of different environments, different cultures, architecture, and more. Most of Emma’s library of pictures she has captured with her camera are of abandoned places; very poor (and pure) environments, places where many cannot see beauty. But through the abstract portrayal of her pictures, Emma’s point is to show the public that everything is imperfect, and there is beauty in those imperfections. Emma loves to experiment with new materials with every new project, always trying to break the bounds of the traditional canvas. Lately she’s explored sustainability by reusing old fabrics and recycled clothing, in order to make something valuable from something seemingly worthless. She is impassioned by the exploration of fabric-manipulation, how it can stretch, shrink or be forced into structured shapes at one end, then lead into natural flowing states at the other. Combining these skills with use of acrylics and other mixed media Emma creates both unique and thought-provoking works.