Emma Thorp is a contemporary artist who works with coloured pencil, digital drawing, and animation. Her work often takes the form of self-narrative, as she records her daily experiences.
How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?
I have always had an interest in the arts, with a special focus on drawing. For as long as I can remember, my work has been self-narrative. I used to worry that work with such a limited subject matter would make it more difficult to engage with an audience. But as I have become older, I have cared less about such things and have found that the honesty in my works resonates with a lot of people.
How does your environment influence your creativity?
My work is a direct reflection of my immediate environment. My subject matter is often focused on my family, the minutiae of life and the juggle of being an artist and mother and wife.
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What different creative media do you use in your work?
My degree is in printmaking, I particularly loved screen printing. After University, I lost my access to the print studio and took a 9-5 job to support myself. I had access to a computer and found that I could replicate the solid blocks of colour that I so loved with screen printing with a computer.
Nowadays, my practice consists of drawing, mixed media works, digital drawing and digital animations.
Tell us more about your daily practice. How has that impacted your work style?
I create every day. I often spend a couple of hours making a digital drawing about my day. When my kids are at school and between household chores and helping my husband with his business, I paint and draw. I take any time that I can and use it.
Do you plan your work out ahead of time, or do you just dive in with your materials and start playing?
I plan my works. I walk my dogs early each morning. It is during this time that I believe I come up with my best ideas.
Describe your creative space.
I have a desk and storage in the spare bedroom. I have now started to take over our large project table in the living room. Much of my work is digital, and made on an iPad, so my digital creative space is very portable.
Working across many different media, how do you organize all of your creative supplies?
I have the very basic strategy of grouping them all by type. My daughter loves to organise things. Last Christmas, as my gift, she organised all of my coloured pencils and created a data base of all of their colours and identifying numbers and amounts. It is one of the greatest gifts that I have ever received.
How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?
Generally, I work on one project at a time.
Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does a new work come about?
“One of Each” is a collection of 49 shaped ply mixed Media Socks. It represents one of each sock worn by the collective members of my family.
Assembled, they create a portrait of daily life; of work, sport, hobbies, and the domestic labour that allows these individual yet intertwined lives to exist. Using scale and repetition I mediate on the seemingly insurmountable mundane tasks of family life, such as finding matching socks.
I find that each work builds on the last. For “One of Each” I had done numerous large laundry drawings previously and they culminated in this large installation.
Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?
I love the whole process. I love solving problems and trying to replicate what I visualise. I love that it never turns out the way I envisioned it, it is usually much more interesting and human.
How does your formal art education help your work develop? Does it ever get in the way?
I honestly don’t remember a lot of what I learned there. The most important thing for me was the relationships that I formed there. The self-confidence I gained by obtaining my degree armed me with the audacity to think I could have a career as an artist.
Tell us about a time when you truly stretched yourself as an artist.
I often jump into large projects without really thinking them through.
I recently created a digital wall art installation that turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated. I was determined to make it work. I wrestled with all elements from the animation to the construction of the support frame and the electrical requirements. I loved the whole experience.
Is there an overarching theme that connects all of your work?
Yes. My work is very personal and records my daily experiences.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
Advocate for yourself the way that you do for your children.
How has your creativity evolved over the years? What triggered the evolution to new media/kinds of work/ways of working?
My work has evolved over the years. I feel that I wasted so much time in my youth, but now that I have children, I see every moment I have to myself as an opportunity to create.
Digital drawing was a real breakthrough for me. With no set up or clean up time, and no space requirement, I could create whenever the opportunity arrived.
What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work?
Because my work is about my life, I do not struggle to remain interested in it.
Where can people see your work?
I have a solo show called “The In Between” at the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery in Qld, Australia opening February 28th and running to May 11 2025.
‘The In Between’ navigates the challenges of motherhood as an artist, exploring the complicated desire to carve out time for oneself and art ‘in between’ life’s responsibilities. It is comprised of paintings, drawings, cyanotypes and digital imagery.
I also post consistently on Instagram @emmathorpart,
Facebook Emma Thorp Artist
and my website https://www.emmathorpart.com
Interview posted February 2025
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