Emma Coyle is painting an icon.
When you look at a model, an advertisement, a photograph what do you see? Perhaps a beautiful, alluring person, maybe a gorgeous handbag or bracelet, maybe a seductive color palette, reflecting off the skin and adornments of the figure.
Emma Coyle sees an icon.
Throughout her nearly three-decades of artistic practice, Emma has come to master The Icon. In her vividly colored paintings, Emma distills the figure down to its essence - the shapes, lines and hues which define our aesthetics, our art, ourselves.
That Emma works from advertisements and fashion publications is easy to see; the artist collects clippings from major fashion media and print voraciously. But the real work she is doing is much more subtle.
When asked if she knows the models she paints, Emma replied “I have no idea who they are for the most part. I have never had an interest in names or celebrities.” In her large-scale figures which dominate walls and rooms, Coyle is stripping the identity of the model, ridding us of the burden of recognition and admiration. In doing so, she opens up the doors to interpretation - it is no longer a Someone in those paintings, it is you toying with the designer bag, you lounging graciously on the chaise, you at the center of it all. At the bright, beating heart of Emma’s work is an embrace of anyone.
Coyle’s work pops off the surface of the canvas and dominates the room; whether on the wall, on a screen, immersed in a bouquet of flowers or shrouded in a dark room. No matter where you encounter it, Emma’s paintings invite you in, beckon you to join them in their joy and live like they do - boldly and unapologetically.