Artists of the Illawarra: Emily King
Emily King is an emerging Illawarra artist whose work I would describe as “pure joy”. She seeks to interpret the natural landscape and native botanicals around her using vibrant bright colours, patterns and textures. Connection to land and se...
Emily King is an emerging Illawarra artist whose work I would describe as “pure joy”. She seeks to interpret the natural landscape and native botanicals around her using vibrant bright colours, patterns and textures. Connection to land and sea is a vital theme in Emily’s work.
After studying fine arts at ANU in the late 1990s, Emily gravitated towards education and culture. She has spent the past decade and a half working with refugee students and communities as an English teacher with a focus on creativity and multi-sensory learning.
During Covid and after a car accident, Emily decided to revisit her passion for painting and she hasn’t looked back! Setting up a studio space in a corner of her bedroom, Emily began painting native flowers and still-life arrangements. Once her canvases began to enlarge, she kicked her husband out of his garage and set up a studio there. At this point, Emily began to explore landscape painting and she has been heavily influenced by the work of Guy Warren, Margaret Olley and Emily Imeson.
Emily had a solo exhibition, Dawn Blooms, at Red Point Gallery, Port Kembla in 2022, and was part of a group exhibition, Escarpment to the Sea, at Bulli’s Timbermill Gallery in February 2023. In 2022 she was a finalist in the Bowral Portrait Prize and Port Kembla Landscape Prize.
Emily wants to establish a local community art space that offers art-minded souls of all ages a safe place to access low-cost expressive art therapy sessions, as well as workshops. To support this aim, Emily is studying a Graduate Certificate in Creative Art Therapies through Charles Darwin University.
