Emerging Painting

Please visit for more information. Glimpses of the everyday and human connection are ongoing threads within Emma Copley’s work. Each painting is inspired by everyday life: a dark sink full of dishes with the sun coming in the window, or her son and daughter sitting with their backs to her, watching TV. She takes pictures of these moments; make notes on colour and sketches. Using the photo as a starting point she creates the composition on panel and eliminates areas from the image in order to intensify the emotion. Born in Dublin, Ireland, raised on the East Coast of the US and currently living in the UK. Emma has a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MA in Fine Art from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge School of Art. She was one of 25 artists shortlisted in The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2016 and was a semi-finalist in the Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year Award in 2015. Emma has shown her works internationally in exhibitions and fairs in the UK, the US, and Italy, including the ING Discerning Eye exhibition, Lynn Painter Stainers Prize, and The Other Art Fair (London). She had a solo exhibition at The Hospital Club in London 2017, completed an artist residency at Stephen Perse Foundation in Cambridge in 2018, and in October 2018 was one of the winners of the Habitat x The Other Art Fair print competition. In August 2019 Emma was awarded with a grant by Cambridge University Libraries to complete a site specific painting installation ‘24 Portraits: Recovering and Reimagining Women's Labour', as part of The Rising Tide Women at Cambridge, October-March 2020.