ARTOOPIA by Emily Stewart

HelloOoOo!

I am Emily, a imaginative artist from Upstate New York now based in Chicago IL.

I started painting when I was young, with my earliest memories of sheer frustration that the watercolor paints I was using DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH PIGMENT.

I took a step away from art for many years to pursue other things. I dove back in to find more meaning and express myself better. I started using pastels, to acrylic and now use a limited pallete with oils of red, blue, yellow and white.

I paint what I see in my minds eye to share my inner world and inspire others to follow their own souls journey-- no matter how strange or obscure. Through my work, I hope to awaken feeling and offer permission to be unapologetically real. I pride myself on having few limits in my creative process and open doors to literally whatever wants to be seen or shown.

My work is also deeply inspired by the Eastern philosophy of learning through “doing” — the idea that understanding grows from action rather than instruction. I begin many pieces without a fixed plan, letting intuition, emotion, free-will and the medium guide me. The canvas becomes a space of dialogue where mistakes are not failures but the back-bone of creativity, and every stroke is an opportunity to discover something new about the world and myself.

I explore themes of darkness, sexuality, the soul, culture, abstraction, conception, life, travel and love. I attempt to capture this and to translate the invisible textures of human experience into color, form, and movement. Each painting is a dropped pin in my life of immersion, of presence and of surrender to the process itself — not as a means to an end, but as "having a crack at life"-respecting the entire journey as one.

It is my pleasure to share with you what lights🚦me up and thank you so much for reading this entire about me.