Up close abstract expressionist portraiture

Emmette Lewis

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Primarily, Emmette’s creative focus regards subjects around eco-maintenance and social activism by composing diverse visual narratives. Through collecting and recycling organic and synthetic materials, Emmette creates abstract reflections of our relationship with nature. These reflections then become an intimate representation of how our environments shape our core. Most often Emmette exhibits these principals through expressionist portraiture and anomalous figures with an ambiguous lens of stylized and structural beauty. Within the juxtaposing form of imagery, the subjects of her works asks the audience to question the relationship between the apparent and the hidden; to consider what exists beyond what is seen. In doing this, her portraits coalesce within the abstract foreground, intricately intertwining self and environment. The merging of Emmette’s subjects aims to celebrate the very theology of nature's divine energy with the divine feminine. The themes that captivate Emmette within her work are inspired by obscuring realities and questioning representation. She does this in her artistic practice by playing with images that embrace both the familiar and the uncanny. The foundation of her subjects explore ideas that look to be devoid of traditional adaptations of beauty. “My paintings fashion identities that are reflective of personal intimacies, relationships, and memories of my community.”