Artist statement

Artist Emma PlunkettEmma Plunkett is a London born and educated artist, independent video maker and designer. Emma’s art has branched out over the years to include stoneware clay sculptures, cyanotype prints, watercolours, oils, poetry, photographic montages, video art, illustrations and vector designs. Emma is technically minded and passionately creative. She is primarily interested in being completely consumed by the artistic process. Her work is autobiographical – she expresses her feelings and her observations of everyday life, while portraying form and composition with clarity.

At the core of Emma Plunkett’s work is the female. Not feminine or politicised. Whether it be a disappearing view of trees into the Spanish horizon, a slithering viscous ceramic or a candid nude. It is always individual and genuine. This we must celebrate.” Curator – Gareth Lister

Her characteristic witty surrealist style celebrates the female form, very often in movement – dance or performance.” SaloArte

Emma’s work is very personal and great, elaborated with great mastery and feeling.” Rafael Vílchez, Ideal

Ian Rutter from Talk Radio Europe interviewed Emma for his talk-show, Life Stories. The show was aired on the 3rd December 2017. Listen to Emma speak about some of her life.

Creative Intention

Emma sometimes feels like a slave to the creative urge. In her experience, when a piece wants to come into existence there is no point in fighting or denying it. However, it sometimes takes a certain amount of courage to allow the art be whatever it wants to be.

Emma values her direct experiences, reflecting her environment and emotions. She often starts with abstract or surreal doodling, which helps her to access her subconscious – she loves to be surprised by what comes out! Making art makes her happy, it’s also a journey – it’s only by completing her artwork chronologically that a subsequent piece can embody what she has learned.

Education

Emma studied art for 6 years, straight from school. She gained A levels in ceramics and art, a diploma in general art and design from Amersham college F.E. and Ba (Hons) Fine Art from East London University. Throughout her adult life, Emma’s been a regular at ceramic evening classes. She’s completed various short courses to do with editing, animation, storytelling and filmmaking. She’s accomplished with Adobe creative suite.

Roles

Emma was Chair of her local artists’ group, Artists’ Network Alpujarra, when they had nearly 50 members. She helped artists to make their work more visible through exhibitions and SEO. Her roles also include communication, project managing, organising exhibitions, managing the website, marketing and keeping a database of artists.

Video work

Emma has worked throughout London and Europe, as a VJ (video projection artist). From the early analogue days, transitioning through to the digital age. She went by her given name of Miss Plunkett and had way too much fun mixing her videos live at all the big night clubs in London, as well at festivals, concerts, art events and for theatre. She taught video at Four Corners, London and she worked as a senior video technician at the London Filmmakers Co-op (The Lux). More recently she has taken her animation and film making skills into more formal work arenas – films for websites and films for conferences. The most noteworthy of which being for Acompalia, Siemens FS, VSO, Morley College and The Miscarriage Association – her animation was runner up in the UK 2017 charity film awards.

Galleries

Before the pandemic Emma’s art was a regular at the Kitty Harri sculpture garden and other temporary exhibitions around Granada, Spain. She writes a blog and also a free weekly art newsletter to communicate information about up coming exhibitions,  juicy details about her creative journey and to show you her latest creations. You can view her portfolio on her art gallery page. You can purchase the licenses to use her art for commercial and non commercial projects and buy digital downloads of images you can print yourself.

Emma Plunkett’s Curiculum

Painting

Emma enjoys taking risks – even if it means ruining a perfectly good piece, just to see what happens next. She is confident in her approach and does not pin herself down to any one style, though she will work in series and develop technically coherent bodies of work. She mostly uses a limited palette of turquoise, magenta and lemon yellow, using a mixture of palette knives, rags and brushes. She sometimes focuses on set ideas, and other times she starts off with complete abstraction, building up an underpainting with random marks… letting it evolve, uncontrived. With this approach, and with turning the canvas round and round, the painting will eventually remind her of something personal. Then she will either create or retrieve reference material from her archive, or paint from memory to bring out the shapes.

Emma plunkett artists with her erotic stoneware sculpture

Sculpture

Emma tends to works mostly in stoneware clay, because of its durability – and plus it can go outside. She prefers to model and build up her sculptures, rather than carve them down. Sometimes it can take a while for the character or shape to emerge and she has to just keep on sculpting without a clue as to what it is she is making – she has learned to trust this process though. She tunes into what she’s doing 100%, listening to the artwork and being aware of the next step to act on – it’s like a dialogue. Sometimes a drastic thought will enter her mind – like, “Go on – break it’s head off, you know you can do it better.” And she does – unafraid to follow the cues.

Video

Emma draws upon her deep knowledge of experimental film-making to bring fresh looking (yet well-tested) ideas to her commissioned short films. She makes films for web, films for conferences, and also stop frame and vector animation. She creates her visual palette from scratch, developing unique characters and graphics, working with actors to recreate realistic movements in her animations and filming around on location. Film-making is like a whole language for her, where she can communicate ideas clearly, even when layering up images. She works with musical composers when commissioning original soundtracks.

Emma films and projects all her own clips and loops when live video mixing (VJing) at festivals and events. She can personalise a show and also write and mix in “stream of consciousness” poetry. When the music is good, the visuals just flow out. Emma provides and sets up all the equipment needed for a video show.

She uses Modul8 for VJing, Final Cut Pro X for editing and Moho Studio Pro for animating. She uses a Canon 70D and Panasonic HS900 for shooting RAW and HD.

Miss Plunkett VJ
Heart Chandelier vector art by Emma Plunkett

Design

Design is a good creative discipline for Emma, because it means she has to rise to the challenge of interpreting someone else’s ideas. To do this, she listens to the brief… gets to know who and what it’s for, and thinks deeply about what it is they need from her, what she can give extra. She gives each design her own unique flourish. She gets a buzz from sharing her creativity with other people, and seeing it embellish their lives and businesses. Repeat patterns, illustrations, graphic design, typography, animated titles and logos are all very practical applications for art, which enrich all levels of everyday life.

Art Heroes

Laurie Anderson is Emma’s biggest artistic influence, the content of her art is so intimate and her multimedia installations have moved Emma to tears in the past (even though she hates crying in public). Emma loves Helen Chadwick’s art (RIP). She respects the way Helen expressed her femininity in such unusual ways – like her flower arrangements of male genitalia – and Helen brought a lot of chocolate into galleries with her chocolate fountains. Cornelia Parker’s artwork is sheer poetry to Emma’s soul. The way she captures intense moments or thoughts about life, brings shivers to her just thinking about it! For example, the smell and feeling of Cornelia’s exploded chapel, with all the pieces of burnt wood suspended in mid air… or her framed book of the London A–Z, with a hole burnt right through the open pages of central London.

Emma Plunkett