Emma Sutherland

My practice revolves around memory and sense of self, and I focused my work on nostalgia and my childhood memories. This culminated in oil paintings that depict a balance of my past and myself now. I specialise in portraiture and still life paintings at a smaller scale, ranging from A5 to A3. I keep my work at a smaller more intimate scale as I feel it portrays the precious nature of memory and how we hold them close to ourselves. Along with my usual practice I challenged myself to paint landscapes as I was not as confident painting them as I am with my other subject matters.

Memory plays a significant role in my practice as I am fascinated with what makes people them. It was interesting to explore my own memory from childhood and rediscover moments, objects and locations that moulded me into who I am today.

A large part of how I work is using reference images, I have aphantasia which means I don't have a mind's eye and cannot visualise images like most people. This leads me to create many self-portraits as I am the easiest reference point for what I am trying to portray, which led to a lot of reminiscing over childhood photos with my parents.

I chose to display my work in a chaotic layout as I wanted to force people to stop and peel back the layers of memory, ultimately landing on a more recent portrayal of myself. I wanted this layering affect to symbolise the overwhelming feeling of nostalgia and the sense of relief when the memory becomes clearer.