Art And Impression

Emma O'Rourke
Paintings

Biography

In “Urban Beauty” O’Rourke synthesizes the urban with the natural, ethereal and transcendental. Expressing personal experiences united with feminine emotion, she utilizes natural elements as symbolism for the self.

Using flowers and shells as a metaphor for women and conceptions of Beauty, motherhood, aging and emotional strangth and fragility.

Scratching and drawing with graphite onto the surface brings an urban nod to the paintings which would otherwise be in the words of Andrea Pollen ‘Too Beautiful’. The workd is supposed to be this - a commentry on beauty and its conceived transience. The importance of the transcendental in life which has kept me sane.

The drips are often representative of tears, from suffering depression and an emotianlly charged family life.. Heavily blooming flowers, leaves, shells and deities are used to create an ‘abstract’ landscape. Each have become a metaphorical embodiment of personal experiences and life perspectives suffused through what seems to be the initially ‘beautiful’ canvases. Strong textural swipes of wax
create textural impasto; thus seemingly soft paintings of peonies embracing the full and sumptuous are also symbiotically powerful. These biomorphic flowers represent strength in the feminine life force and nuturing motherhood and embrace vulnerability with tears. Shells and roses are used as a represention of harmony in our chaotic world and how heavenly serendipity weaves karmically throughout life.
In the 'Fragility of Beauty' series looks to British Butterflies looking at relationahips in this realm and their effects therein. 'The Fragility of our Beautiful Moment' the Male Adonis and Peacock butterflies hover the peony head of the nubile woman.

Evidence of O’Rourke’s sartorial background comes through in her color pallete, both her parents and grandparents worked within the fashion industry, and she studied art and fashion at the University of the Arts in London at Central Saint Martins College with peers such as Stella McCartney, Giles Deacon, and Hussein Challayan. She often remarks on her works as ‘collections’.
O’Rourke also fuzes urban elements into her painting, having grown up in London, she reconnects its raw edge to the canvas by scratching and drawing with graphite into the paint surfaces and dripping latex over the top of the work. Design and music also play an influetial role, whilst strong layouts ground each piece, rhythmic brush strokes create visual vibrancy. O’Rourke began drawing and painting before she could talk. By the age of three she had her first works exhibited at the Ben Uri Gallery in London.O’Rourke moved to DC in 2000. She paints in her studio at the Jackson Art Center (www.jacksonartcenter.com), where she has bi-annual open studio shows every first Sunday of May, and first Sunday of December. She has shown her work in galleries across the globe, and has international buyers. O’Rourke is currently creating a new body of work for upcoming shows in LA, London and Spain. She is represented by the Modern Artists Gallery and The Catto Gallery in Great Britain. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and two children, and goes back to the UK regularly.