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Meet Emily Whitehead
Emily Whitehead deftly harnesses the elements of
replication to infuse her creations with an unmistakable aesthetic of conscious
intent. Consequently, her work conveys an undeniably independent and authentic
character that is certain to influence the trajectory of post contemporary art.
Emily
Whitehead was born in Westland,
Michigan on September 22, 1978.
Born into a family thoroughly appreciative of the arts, she was exposed to
music, painting, and dance at a very early age. Influenced by the complexity of
Bach, , the precise realization of the physically
impossible of Escher and the synesthetic choreography of Nureyev, Emily began
to experiment artistically with a variety of mediums. She eventually chose to
focus her artistic interest on drawing and painting. Emily studied and emulated
many visual artists; working on everything from rendering the human form as
accurately as possible to pushing the medium into both previously explored and
unexplored abstract realms. Ultimately, she found her own voice.
Emily’s obsession with the structured works of the great
classical composers, the
precise realization of the physically impossible by Escher, and the
almost geometrical and flowing nature of dance guided her to find and express
herself initially through the use of ink and vellum and later, through gesso on
masonite. Much of her early work depicts this time of discovery, distilling the
many years spent in her family’s home on Barton Street and the countless summers
spent in Bedford, Pennsylvania into the structured conveyance
of the wide range of emotions found within some of her designs. When not
depicting the past, Emily conveys her present fears and insecurities, hoping
that expelling them through art will enable her to move on to new and
interesting places in both life and her work: the act of creating is essential
to her livelihood and is an involuntary response to existing within her
environment.
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