Emily Vanns is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in East London. Her printmaking practice focuses primarily on linocuts, taking inspiration from an evolving library of imagery including illuminated manuscripts, early Renaissance paintings, metaphysical and surrealist art, and folklore.
Emily graduated with a BA Hons in Fine Art from Kingston University in 2014 and also briefly studied at The Royal Drawing School in Shoreditch. At university she had been making sculptural installations alongside paper based work including drawings and monoprints. However, after graduating Emily didn’t have access to a studio, thus the sculptural side of her practice fell away, and instead she concentrated all of her energy into drawing and painting. Up until the pandemic she was working in retail at The V&A Museum, which not only gave the support she needed to continue her creative practice, but also provided constant inspiration.
Over the years Emily has experimented with many different printmaking techniques; “I always loved the magic of it but I just didn’t have the tools or the facilities to carry on with that side of my practice”. In 2019 she started a storytelling project for Walthamstow Art Night with artist collective Hewing Wittaire. At the time she was creating a lot of large scale paintings and was looking for a way to scale down her work without losing her style. Emily tried lino printing and immediately fell in love with the process. “I love how accessible it is and the way the lines and carvings form on the page works so well with the imagery I use,” says the printmaker. Now, her practice predominantly focuses on this medium.
“My style has really developed over the last two years,” comments Emily. She made a journey from a typical fine art background, creating work for a gallery setting, to producing much more illustrative pieces. “There are definitely elements from my old work that marry into the new,” explains Emily. She continues; “I have always been interested in how objects and symbols interact with one another. I would say I have built up a kind of library of images and icons that come from all kinds of eclectic sources. I like to play around with how they work together in an image and what kind of story they tell when they are placed in a certain way.” Her sources of inspiration are far and wide reaching, including everything from metaphysical and surrealist art, to old comic strips, botany and folklore. “I am always on the lookout for new material and I can be inspired by just about anything. A new leaf I see on a walk in the woods or a feature on a building I hadn’t noticed before.”
One of her most prominent themes is the portal, or window, reflecting her interest in “how a simple image can expand the flatness of the paper and open up the possibilities of the printed space”. Today, Emily rarely works with sculpture, but the influence of space and physicality is still very important to her work.
Emily tells us that “the pandemic has completely changed the trajectory”, meaning that the past two years have provided the most notable elements of her career. Currently, she works for herself full-time; “whilst it can be terrifying and uncertain, it has given me the freedom to take on opportunities and projects I would never have had the time for in the past”. Notable recent projects include a commission for musician Edward Randell, creating a cover piece for his EP Almanak. She is also excited to get back into workshops and markets; “community and connection is so important to me and it’s brilliant to be able to meet new people and share creative skills”.
www.emilyvanns.com
@emilyvanns
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