We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emma Stine a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Emma, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
I became interested in art when I was quite young, and was lucky enough to have parents who encouraged it. Probably the learning began through a combination of extra-curricular activities, including RISD’s Pre-College program, and trips to museums or old cathedrals with my family. Growing up I was surrounded by conversations about historical art and literature, which certainly has informed my taste as an adult, and has been interesting to parse out from my own work as a practicing artist. Learning to paint, however, began in undergrad at the University of New Hampshire, where I studied with a number of incredibly talented painters. I also spent time at the Lorenzo de’ Medici institute in Florence and was able to paint while being surrounded by the masterworks in the cathedrals and the Uffizi Museum. So much of my learning in painting has come from looking at original works, spending time trying to absorb the character of the paint. Currently, I am preparing to finish my MFA in Painting & Drawing at the School of the Art institute of Chicago. This last year and a half in this program has taught me more than I had expected I would learn, and has deepened not only my material upstanding of paint, but my knowledge of art history, critical theory, the contemporary art world, and my own self as an artist within it. My cohort, and the art community in Chicago, have also expanded my artistic horizons, and pushed me to be more open to looking at all different sorts of art, a change that has in turn broadened the scope of my own work. The skill that has come to be the most important to my practice in these recent months is the ability to recognize how little I know, and learn quickly from the artists around me who share their processes, techniques, and perspectives.
To that point, the greatest obstacle to my learning has frequently been my own unwillingness. Like many people, I’ve fallen into patterns where I feel I have a system that works well in my studio, so when a new approach or way of making is presented I become defensive and resistant. It takes a lot of courage and energy to try something new when what you’re doing feels like a sure bet; there’s the fear that the new thing won’t “work” (whatever that means), or that you will have committed that cardinal sin of wasting time as a result. Also, given the state of the world right now it has been good for me to be honest about when I don’t have the energy for something. That being said, it is as important in a studio practice to figure out what you don’t like and why as it is to find what you do. It also adds a new tool to your box. Many times I’ve tried approaches that I’ve written off at the time, only to realize that they can be used to resolve pieces down the line. If I’d let go of my own stubbornness and seen that the time spent exploring was worth the investment, many of those jumps I would’ve been able to get to much more quickly.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am primarily a painter, and work almost entirely in oil paint. I was born and raised in New Hampshire, but spent one year of early schooling in the UK, and the last year of high school studying in Sicily, Italy with the American Field Service exchange program. Upon completing that I returned to the US to enroll at the University of New Hampshire studying both Fine Arts and Italian Studies. My obsession with oil paint was started by an introductory painting course I took during my time there, through which I fell in love with what the medium could do and the feel of it on a surface. It also fit and reinforced many of my interests in Italian and European art history, and has continued for years to be the core of my practice. After receiving my bachelor’s, I moved to Boston and spent my time working in the studio, exploring how I could use painting to create images, build larger narratives, and how that process could help me respond to my life as it unfolded. Many of these works still hold deep emotional significance for me, but for the majority the paint itself was being used in service of the image; my intent was to control the medium so the resulting image was polished or unproblematic for a viewer. My work as it stands now, however, has expanded beyond the confines of my taste. This past semester I was encouraged to consider what it meant to produce paintings that fit my taste in artwork versus ones that felt deeply my own, where not only the image but the paint application embodied my intention with the piece. This followed on the heels of a conversation about the difference between painting about an emotion and painting with it. My practice has made a recent shift, of which I am proud but still slightly wary, away from the clean images of the earlier work, towards rougher creations which involve more time, more materials, and more of an engagement with the material of oil paint itself. The work is rougher, but it holds more genuine exploration of my emotion than the more technical work of the past. The images are often now unbalanced, and full of formal conflicts, but they present them to the viewer without excuse, and ask the viewer to participate in their resolution. Now I feel that my work bridges a gap between me and the viewer, and opens room for a genuine conversation to take place. My goal for a collector is for them to find a piece of mine with which they identify, and through the relationship between them and the object build a conversation. My excitement with the prospect of this new work going out into the world is that I haven’t set specific parameters for where that conversation might lead, but I know that the side of it that I am presenting with the work is genuine.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
The most important thing I’ve found for my studio practice is time. Having the time and space to be alone with my work, focus on it, and deeply engage with the process of developing and finishing each piece is invaluable. There certainly are habits that I have built to allow me to keep making when I have limited time or no mental energy to focus, but when I am able to take an entire day for the studio I can feel the difference that makes. As a result it is my view that the best thing society can do to support artists, or creatives of any sort, is provide support for them to protect their time. In today’s world it is the sad truth that the support that often makes the most difference is financial; this includes grant funding, support for artists with families, fully-funded residencies, funding for public schools and universities to bring in visiting artists, or stipends for the development of public art projects. For most artists, myself included, the biggest obstacle between them and the studio is linked to finances and needing to support themselves. If public funding was more abundant and available, artistic communities would be able to strengthen and expand, deepening the significance of their output and the breadth of voices that get to participate. This also means supporting the funding of competitive salaries for art teachers and professors, administrators, and community organizers. For what society can do to this end, when issues of public funding allocation, such as support for arts programs in grade schools and public universities, appear on ballots in local elections, be sure to vote. One way to actively participate and make a difference is to stay informed when these measures come up and vote to protect them.
The most direct way for people to support artists, however, is of course to buy art. Whenever possible try to go to craft fairs, art markets, or galleries if that is accessible to you. Get in touch with artists via instagram and ask to see their work. Spending even just $25 at a craft fair, instead of buying something mass-produced from Homegoods, makes a real difference to artists and creators, and long term will enable you as a consumer to create your own collection, built of pieces that mean something to you.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
The activity that constantly impacts my thinking and working philosophy is talking to other artists, people who are working right now and struggling with the same issues I am. Inevitably those conversations give rise to new ideas, solutions, or resources that help everyone involved, and the process of figuring those out with someone always lifts my spirits. There are also many books, YouTube videos, interviews, and essays that have shaped how I approach my practice; in no particular order here are a few and what they have provided for me.
“The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. This one is endlessly cited as unlocking creative potential and getting people back in touch with their creative selves. I’d like to advocate for it, though, for people who already have active studio practices or have been through MFA programs because it does a good job of connecting the internal creative world with the external practical one. The habits that it teaches have helped me feel both that my creative practice does not only take place in the studio, and that when life bleeds into the studio I have the means to cope.
“The Louisiana Channel” on YouTube, and “Daily Rituals: Women at Work” by Mason Currey. Both of these serve a similar function, and relate to the artists’ conversations I referred to above. Two of the most important things for me in making my practice successful are flexibility and resilience. I am still very much at the beginning of my career, and my practice is shifting all the time. As a result I am endlessly looking for artists who have shared their experiences navigating this life, and the two resources above are excellent repositories of artists’ interviews. Particularly “The Louisiana Channel,” the YouTube channel of the Louisiana Museum in Denmark, has a wide range of in-depth interviews with artists, writers, poets, architects and more where they talk about their histories, working practices, intellectual interests, and wishes for the future.
“There I’ve Killed It” interview with Amy Sillman. This interview gives an excellent peak into an artist’s way of working and problem-solving, something I found deeply recharging and reassuring to read.
“The Task of the Translator” by Walter Benjamin. A slightly older text but one that has stayed in mind over the last few months for how it can relate to translating ideas or intents across media.
There are many many more but most of them serve similar functions as those above. They do not make me directly reflect on management philosophies or entrepreneurial thinking, but all of them provide me with enough encouragement and energy to confront issues head-on and consistently show up in the studio ready to make.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Www.emmaransomeart.com
- Instagram: @emma.ransome
