Emma Scott-Smith’s flat is just a ten-minute walk from the Artlink Central office in Stirling where I work. Down one of the beautiful Victorian streets near Stirling’s Albert Halls, I’m impressed as I enter a world of large-scale artwork adorning every wall. Six-foot high paintings depict the female figure in various poses; dark greens, greys and blues give me an initial clue as to the mood and direction of this young artist’s work.
Emma boils the kettle and we sit down in her charming living room. It exudes an arty and intellectual vibe and doubles up, along with her hall, as a temporary exhibition space for all her artwork. A copy of Psychologist magazine lies on the coffee table, hinting at another side to her existence.
As we talk the pieces of the jigsaw come together to form a fuller picture. Emma is currently studying part-time as a PhD Psychology student at Stirling University, specializing in community critical psychology. She graduated from the same university in 2006 in psychology before completing an MSc at Queen Margaret’s in Edinburgh.
Prior to this excursion down the academic route Emma was a successful artist and exhibited widely. She gained her first solo exhibition at the age of nineteen entitled “The Last Hope”, held at the MacRobert art gallery in Stirling. Emma’s work focuses on the human form, mostly female, and tackles recurring issues of chronic pain, isolation and hope:
‘I adore colour, especially red. My work concentrates on the female form in surreal settings and exposes human form for all its weaknesses and strengths. I suffer with chronic spinal pain which has driven me from an early age to pursue a visual narrative of this pain and hope.’
Her work has now developed into examining the subjects of discrimination and society’s attitudes to and themes around disability. Her last solo exhibition – “Useless Eaters” (2005) – was named after a term used by the Nazis during WWII to describe disabled people. It was held at The Smith Art Gallery & Museum in Stirling.
As I admire the scale and boldness of Emma’s paintings, I can sense a life-long yearning to make sense of the body, of pain, of being a woman. There is a lot of emphasis on the details of the body: the muscles, sinews and joints. And while the limbs tend to be depicted in life-like fashion, the faces are haunting and other-worldly. The artist seems to be saying that pain can make your life all about physicality and deprive you of your personality. I also notice some small white lumps jutting out and forming a spine up one of the paintings. ‘They’re teeth’, says Emma.
Emma is caught up at the moment in her studies but aims to combine both her art and her psychology in the future to aid individual mental, social and physical health in the community:
‘I aim to develop my PhD work to further generate a form of social action research, using arts in mental health projects in the community to generate social change and social justice within society.’
Would really like to see more of Emma’s work – do you have a website?
I love the deepness of the paintings + yet the almost transparent human form.