Emily Catherine shares some of her art ahead of her debut solo exhibition

Libianca (2024)

Bleach and ink on 350gsm smooth paper

This series was born out of a year of listening, discovering and enjoying new music in 2023. I had spent a year creating the Here With You series, and I needed to paint something fluid and responsive in contrast to the huge photoreal charcoal drawings. Fellow artist and friend, Laura Decorum said 'I really like your older series you used to do with monotone faces and splashes of colour, why don't you revisit that style but use a different medium. Have you tried painting with ink and bleach?' I then did and I loved it. I had also heard People by Libianca, and immediately fell in love with the strangeness and humanity of the story. 

Using bleach and ink forces you to throw away control. You cannot have any expectations of how the materials will behave. As Bob Ross would say 'happy little accidents' and I really enjoyed how this married up with the joy of discovering new music. Discovering and having music in my life has been my longest, most romantic relationship. Being part of the global Hip Hop community, music is a huge part of that and falling in love with a song is an indescribable comfort and pleasure. It is one you often can't express gratitude for in any other way than homage. Obviously, painting is my way of  thanking musical artists and sharing them with everyone else, so that people might get to experience that same joy of discovery that I do.

The Iceberg Theory (2022), album cover for CLBRKS and Vagrant Real Estate 

Acrylic on hand stretched 220gsm smooth paper.

My work with musicians is always very intimate and it is different with each of them. When I was asked to work for CLBRKS and Vagrant Real Estate for their album The Iceberg Theory, I was very excited. Aside from the sampling and musical tonality being cinematic and sprawling, the themes within the lyrics were metatextual and juicy. Based on themes throughout the writings of Hemingway, there was also a feeling of surreality and ambiguity. Both musicians had cited their love of my use of detail and storytelling in the work I'd done previously for Your Old Droog, a New York rapper I work with frequently. 

I use allegory a lot in my work, which is a term used to describe storytelling (typically in Renaissance paintings). I used both Heironymous Bosch's painting The Garden of Earthly Delights and Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors but altered, added and removed elements, similar to sampling in Hip Hop. On top of that, I listen to each lyric, loop, and beat and replicate that visually for people, so that you hopefully really can judge an album by its cover. I love to platform and honour fringe, emerging musicians. Especially since I myself am a fringe visual artist, I know I appreciate it when I am afforded the same.

Warren (2023). From the Here With You series
Charcoal and pencil on paper. 

In 2016 I asked ten people to sit for a portrait series about the idea of divorce. Having gone through a marital divorce myself, I wanted to try and build a series of works about the act of looking, which best reflected our wider problem with being removed or divorced from each other. However, it's taken eight years for me to finish this series. When I returned to work on it, I realised that the message about divorce felt hollow, flat and frankly outdated. We have had such a tumultuous time societally that divorce, and feeling removed from each other, was not enough, so I changed the entire concept and used alternative posing from each photo sitting session for Here With You. 

The series then became about unity, togetherness and connection. Deciding how we ourselves choose to relate to each other, judge, and converse in a slower, luxuriating way in the moment. The sitter here is Warren, one of the first people I met who celebrated and supported me as an artist in the grime community. After meeting for the first time professionally, we are now long term friends and I would consider him family. We've been through illness, broken heartedness, work, children but most importantly, we've laughed together.

Warren is the perfect sitter to convey this unique and special relationship that people have as a muse to an artist, and the importance of people and their unknown influence on the success of an artist's work. Initially a grime artist wanting to commission me, to a friend, to an inspiration, but always a catalyst for my creativity. There is a unique and special story behind every sitting relationship in this series. This is no less true with the musicians that commission me to paint their covers for albums or singles. 

I Can Heal and Give You Art, an exhibition by Emily Catherine, takes place between Sun 25 - Sat 31 August at Richmond House, 1-3 Canal Street. There will also be a private view on Saturday 24 August and a series of talks about artmaking throughout the week. Tickets are available via ticketsource.co.uk/artultra

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