We were lucky to catch up with Emily Shepard recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Emily thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I’ve always loved making art. I remember the joy of painting in kindergarten, and spending my free time as a child drawing and making small books using paper and a stapler. My Mom was my first drawing teacher, and guided me on the trickier details of perspective when I was stuck. She outfitted me and my sisters with tiny wire bound sketchbooks so we could record what we saw on family vacations. I was also fascinated by hand lettering. After learning cursive in school, I worked to develop my own lively, distinct handwriting. I read “how to” books about calligraphy, and practiced multiple styles of lettering.

I think I had a gut feeling I would work in a creative field, even in high school I made posters and drawings, and helped a teacher by illustrating a book she wrote and intended to publish.

During college I discovered graphic design could be a career, and gravitated to that after graduation – a perfect place to merge my interests in image, form, composition and typography. In the evenings I continued my study of studio art, taking drawing at Massachusetts College of Art and printmaking at Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts. I followed the same pattern of work and extended education in art when I moved to Colorado. Eventually, I ended up on the West Coast, and started taking classes at California College of the Arts (then called California College of Arts and Crafts). I began in the graphic design program but pretty quickly I realized I wanted to be in fine arts. After about a year and a half of taking fine art classes I applied & got into the MFA program. That was a big leap, a trial by fire, but I found my artistic voice and began a lifelong practice of making art.

Emily, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m an artist in the SF Bay Area. I’m a member of the artist-run gallery, Mercury 20, in Uptown Oakland. I’m super excited to be having a solo show there, “A Luminous Current” which will be up from March 14 – April 19, 2025. The opening will be on Saturday March 15, from 3 to 5 pm, and we’ll be having an artist talk on Saturday March 22, from 4 to 5 pm.

My art is about creating artifacts of inner awareness. I make layered works that explore states of presence, a search for wholeness and embodied understanding. I begin by painting and drawing on various surfaces, then “harvest” the most vital elements – cutting out fragments that feel most authentic. These become the raw materials for my work, where I look for the unexpected poetry of disparate elements. I think of it like choreographing compositions – they may struggle and settle, connect or collide. I search for moments of presence and alignment. Each mark and element becomes a player in the piece, carrying its own mood.

My early work after college was in graphic design. My formative role in that field involved arranging elements on illustration board, making them “camera ready” for the offset printing process. It’s interesting to reflect on the fact that years after that early career this process of deconstructing and reassembling is still core to me. It’s a physical memory of a way of working.

Books and lettering have been a persistent interest as well. I often use found paper from accounting ledgers, antique encyclopedias, flash cards, or index cards. These old papers have beautiful surfaces and subtle colors which I like. But I’m also interested in subverting these relics of authority, categorization and certainty, pulling them into a realm of ambiguity and multiplicity. I love how text blocks and letter forms dissolve into pure shape or symbol, like half-heard phrases hovering below complete comprehension.

Inked, gestural loops show up in my art, potentially relics of my interest in calligraphy and a reference to “greeking” from the early days of graphic design. These marks are abstract, they offer no clarity, and yet remind us of language in the broadest sense, of the difficulties of understanding and communicating.

These loops also make me think of repetition and the cyclical pattern of in/out breath. This connects to another influence on my work – my practice of swimming year round in the San Francisco Bay without a wetsuit. There’s a parallel to wading into the cold water and surrendering to sensation – and submerging into mark making in the studio. In both cases I must be attentive and present with what comes up, whether it’s uncomfortable, luminous, or an anxious struggle.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A lesson I’ve had to unlearn is that striving and intellectualizing won’t get me to where I want to go as an artist. Controlling and directing the work might be effective for some, but for me it results in pieces that are stiff and overwrought. I want to make art that seems to have generated itself, where there’s a spontaneity of line, gesture and form. To do this, I need to let the materials and process guide me, and be open to surprise and discovery. I’m looking for authenticity and honesty of expression.

I learned this lesson when I was in grad school at CCA. I realized that when I approached my work from a sense of striving, trying to look “artistic” I missed the mark of connecting with my audience. Whereas when I created from an honest, imperfect place, my art seemed to resonate – both with others and myself.

The larger backstory is tied to a health crisis. A year before I started grad school, I suffered the abrupt and permanent loss of hearing in one ear. I went from being an active, fast paced person to weeks of being constantly dizzy and forced to move very slowly. It was a long process to recover, and for my brain to adapt to this sensory loss. In that time of stillness, I discovered a quiet connection to an authentic voice. I still return to this lesson often: to slow down, to come back to an inner awareness – using drawing, gesture and marks to connect me to presence.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My mission as an artist is to share artifacts of embodied experience and honest, unmannered self expression. In our highly digital world, I find meaning in the physical act of making. I hope my art will inspire in others their ability to drop into an inner awareness, and feel what exists for them beneath language.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://emilyshepard.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilyshepard.art/
• Other: https://mercurytwenty.com/

Image Credits

Dana Davis