Emma K Thomas

I am a British artist, living in Denmark.

I came to art later in life, having worked for over a decade as a journalist and radio producer with the BBC World Service and Arts programmes. Originally I studied Medicine at Oxford University, but I came to realise that this was a decision taken for the sake of others, and I needed to find my own path. Life had knocked me off balance at an early age, with an early separation from my mother, and again as I was coming of age, when my father died prematurely leaving me without immediate family. In retrospect, art was there all along, but I needed to find the confidence to pursue it, and the means. I grew up in the north of England, lived in London for many years and have settled in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The key concerns in my practice have stemmed from life: the unpredictability of circumstance, absence and presence, the condition of the outsider or foreigner, the marginal and the discontinuous. Landscape and place; feeling at home in many places and nowhere.

City and Guilds of London Art School (BA Honours in Fine Art specialising in Painting, First Class)

City and Guilds of London Art School Foundation Course

Birkbeck College, University of London (BA Honours in Spanish and Latin American Studies, part-time evening classes, First Class)

The Queen's College, University of Oxford (BA Honours in Physiological Sciences, Medicine, Upper Second Class)

I am currently applying to the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, 2023, with a new large drawing 'The Milk of Human Kindness' (not currently for sale).

This is the first major piece I have made since concluding the collaborative international artwork, A Tapestry of Species, which can be viewed on social media @withNature2020. This work, begun in 2019 before the pandemic and concluded in 2021, diverged from my studio practice and sought to raise awareness globally of the biodiversity crisis in which we find ourselves. It was featured on the BBC World Service (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09ndxz1) and on @unbiodiversity on Instagram.

I had a solo show in 2019 at Kunstbibliotekets Udstillingsrum, Copenhagen and previous exhibitions are listed here:

2015 Sculpture by the Sea, Aarhus, Denmark
Sculpture Inside, Aarhus, Denmark

2013 The Spring Exhibition, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen.

2012 City & Guilds of London Art School Degree Show, London.

2011 ‘ThirtySeven’: Parr St, London.
Art|Unity|Hope: City & Guilds of London Art School, London.

2010 Vault: Lambeth Accord, London. (now Block336)