EtchingMemberPrintmakingScreen PrintSolo artist

Rosie Emerson

posted by POP Members March 29, 2021

Rosie Emerson is an award winning contemporary artist from the UK, working almost exclusively on representing the female form. Rosie’s figures draw reference from archetypes old and new, from Artemis to the modern day super model. Inspired by her love of museums, architecture, theatre, silhouettes, and shrines, she uses dramatic lighting, hand made costumes, set and prop-making, alongside printmaking and painting to create ethereal works on paper.

Her subjects range from well known icons, to models, actors, dancers, and friends, which she photographs in her studio. Rosie then uses numerous different print techniques to bring these forms to life on paper. Her screen prints are delicately embellished with bronze powders and more unusual materials including charcoal powder, ash, and sawdust. These textural prints shift the focus of printmaking from precision and replication, to the creation of unique, hand-finished prints.

Rosie’s cyanotype works enable her to use UV light from the sun to expose objects and large scale photographic negatives directly on to paper which has been coated with a light sensitive emulsion. Once dried, the works are often hand painted or gilded with gold leaf. She states; “The technique itself has an element of magic about it, it is wonderful to be able to combine painting, collage and photography in this way’’.

Her current photopolymer etchings continue to push printmaking in new directions. Rosie’s monochrome portraits are delicately embossed with unusual materials; salt, netting, hair, and cellophane. She also hand builds small theatre maquettes, which play with scale and create ornate surrounds to her subjects. Her artworks almost always echo previous eras, and sometimes other worlds entirely.

Career highlights include Artist in Residence at Somerset House, and exhibitions at The Royal West of England Academy Bristol, and The Southbank Centre. A finalist for the Young Masters Prize and shortlisted for the Rise Art Print Award, Rosie was also commissioned by Arts Council England to create a new Guinness World record by producing the world’s largest cyanotype photograph.

Her work is widely collected and exhibited both in the UK and internationally. She has been commissioned by brands including Sony, Triumph Underwear, Redbull, P&O Cruises, Toms, and Annoushka Jewellery, working with models Amber le Bon, Daisy Lowe, and singer Eliza Doolittle.

Rosie’s artworks have also been featured in Creative Review, Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Another Magazine, The Financial Times Magazine, and The Sunday Times Style Magazine.

www.rosieemerson.co.uk
@rosieemerson

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