Hi, thank you so much for being here, for sharing my story and exploring my artwork.
I have always loved being the happy maker and gatherer of wild things. From being wee small, gathering meadow wildflowers to fill handmade cards to give to my gorgeous Mum, to building fairy treehouses from moss, sticks and pebbles in the garden with my own kids.
Watching my twin girls Ella and Juliet painting and drawing with delight from an early age, rekindled my artistic fire.
Life can change in a heartbeat.
One minute I was planning Christmas for my three year old twins, and the next my daughter Juliet was seriously ill, and diagnosed with a brain tumour. I was in survival mode for months. Years.
Slowly with time moments in nature, helped me reconnect to myself and to heal.
Alongside creating and being a Mum to my two beautiful girls, I have worked as a Speech and Language Therapist in the NHS for 25 years in both clinical and professional leadership roles. Taking care of your team and leading a service within a system that is stretched beyond its limits, each and every day is a hard path to navigate. In 2020, at the edge of a very difficult period in my career, I found myself in the wilderness and standing alone.
But by putting one foot in front of the other, over, and over, for long enough you mark a new path. Here I found so many other beautiful and brave people prepared to walk it too. For me the wilderness is where all the creatives, the mavericks and stubborn system shakers live. I like it here.
I now work as the Head of Family Support at Martin House Children's Hospice, near York, leading the therapy and emotional support teams who together provide holistic and wellbeing care for children, young people and their families. My professional work weaves through every painting. I hope each one takes you to a place of calm, to a sense that grounds you and soothes your busy soul.
I have chosen the wilderness, and capturing this vast, and beautiful space on a canvas, as my goal. Here is where nature’s scale gives me perspective and its energy gives me strength.
Thank you for browsing my website and for your support on my journey so far.
Emma x
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Representation:
Mercer Gallery, Harrogate 2020
Gallagher and Turner Gallery, Newcastle 2022
The Hospitium, Museum Gardens, York 2023 and 2024Pairings Wine Bar, York Nov 23- Feb 24
Open Studios, York 2023 and 2024 -
Artists Statement:
Landscapes are sacred and brave. My work reflects both the calm I feel as I move through wild spaces and the vulnerability of navigating vast, open, and unpredictable places. My paintings move, as I do, through wild spaces. The marks are vulnerable, the colours are calm, the lines wander and search.
As I walk through the Yorkshire landscape, I love to explore the lines, shapes, and colours that I see. I record these as fragments of my memory. I seek out the stories of those who once lived and sheltered on the land, to discover the relationship we once had to the wilderness. I like to consider the contrast between the steadfastness of the rock face or the mountain against our fragile dependency on the land or our vulnerability to natures elements.
Later I weave these memories into my paintings; to create a
sense of the place I travelled and to capture the beauty of what I have seen.
I hope that my work speaks to both the romantic in you, and
to the part of you that seeks calm and strength from walking with a wild heart.
It gives me joy to make paintings for you, that I hope may whisper to you from the wilderness and remind you too of your wild heart and your call back to find what you most need.
With love
Emma x
Kind words about my paintings
“I am never just looking at Emma’s paintings, I’m pulled in, standing in the midst of them, feeling it, hearing it, a part of it” …… “I feel the ferocity of the wild weather, the energy, the vitality. I am up in the fells, feeling strong and at one with the wild elements, alone, but not alone, part of it all”.
“This brings me calm, stillness, order and structure, like listening to classical music, it brings me clarity”.
“Emma’s paintings give me a sense of the power and both the beauty and drama of the natural
landscape”.
“They make me think how vast our surroundings are. It makes me think about energy and emotions. I
am prompted to just be….”
Emma James’s art
-allows you to take something new each time you look.
- is a focal point for your home, and a conversation piece.
- makes you feel alive, draws you in and taps into your memories.
- connects you back to nature and gives you the mark of a wild heart.