Emily King is an emerging Illawarra artist whose work I would describe as “pure joy”. She seeks to interpret the natural landscape and native botanicals around her using vibrant bright colours, patterns and textures. Connection to land and sea is a vital theme in Emily’s work.
After studying fine arts at ANU in the late 1990s, Emily gravitated towards education and culture. She has spent the past decade and a half working with refugee students and communities as an English teacher with a focus on creativity and multi-sensory learning.
During Covid and after a car accident, Emily decided to revisit her passion for painting and she hasn’t looked back! Setting up a studio space in a corner of her bedroom, Emily began painting native flowers and still-life arrangements. Once her canvases began to enlarge, she kicked her husband out of his garage and set up a studio there. At this point, Emily began to explore landscape painting and she has been heavily influenced by the work of Guy Warren, Margaret Olley and Emily Imeson.
Emily had a solo exhibition, Dawn Blooms, at Red Point Gallery, Port Kembla in 2022, and was part of a group exhibition, Escarpment to the Sea, at Bulli’s Timbermill Gallery in February 2023. In 2022 she was a finalist in the Bowral Portrait Prize and Port Kembla Landscape Prize.
Emily wants to establish a local community art space that offers art-minded souls of all ages a safe place to access low-cost expressive art therapy sessions, as well as workshops. To support this aim, Emily is studying a Graduate Certificate in Creative Art Therapies through Charles Darwin University.
