Emma Barnesavailable works
Emma Barnes is a multi-disciplinary artist from South Carolina. In 2014, she graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelor's in Painting & Printmaking and a double major in Gender Studies. After graduating she co-founded Guard n' Flags, a custom screen printing business in Richmond, VA. In 2019 she attended Athena Standards, an art residency in Athens, Greece. Emma earned her MFA in Painting and Photography in 2023 in Germany's Alfred/Düsseldorf program.
Growing up in the rural south continues to influence Barnes' investigation of materials and motifs. Guided by metaphors and wordplay that exist between nature and human experience, Emma investigates ideas of landscape, self, and time by linking poetics in her motifs, process, and materials. She explores the porous nature of plaster to create work that resembles artifacts or fossils. Emma is drawn to plaster’s shift from liquid to solid because the transformation parallels cycles of nature as well as changes in her own personal growth.