Artists

Emily Gernild

Emily Gernild’s paintings present a lush series of tableaux within the still life tradition that take exception to commonly held notions of the genre. Rather than the finality of ‘nature morte’, her works are filled with the promise of vitality and the potentiality of being. Lying seductively between abstraction and representation, her opulent paintings exude a deeply sensory awareness of colour and shape. Rabbit-skin glue imbues her paintings with an ethereal and shimmery quality, as the organic material permeates their surfaces. Painted in earthy tones and saturated hues, fruits, nuts, seeds, vegetation and flower buds are seen alongside jugs of creamy milk and rich, dark soil, embodying a desire for nourishment that sustains the continuous cycle of life. As if filled to the brim, her painted cups generously ‘runneth over’ with the cloying sweetness of port wine. Perhaps preoccupied by existential thought, at times a darkness pervades the paintings, alluding to the divergent peripheries of abundance.