Following some extensive travels in the Norwegian arctic, artist Emmie van Biervliet returns to Sarah Wiseman Gallery with a new collection of work inspired by her journey north. Using her distinctive style of combining drawing, painting, collage and found objects, she has created atmospheric paintings that explore a world of waves, ice and whales; where in the summer, the sun never sets.
Emmie van Biervliet has evolved a career for herself that combines travel with making art. Partly reportage and partly personal journals, her paintings are visual expressions of Emmie's experiences and thoughts about the places she visits. Recent journeys have taken her across Mongolia, Eastern Europe, Turkey, India and Cuba.
This particular trip has been a new experience for Emmie; In the past, her travels have entailed long rail and road journeys, but not by sea, which meant she had to adapt very quickly to life on the waves.
'Travelling so slowly meant that I was often able to paint and sketch while sailing, being careful to listen out for changing weather when your whole world would suddenly tip sideways with the propensity for paints, pens, water and half made work to scatter in all directions unless fast enough to secure them. The wind and chopping seas would also lend themselves to capturing an atmosphere as you were sometimes buffeted from all sides and wave spray merging the colours on paper in unplanned but interesting ways.'
Emmie van Biervliet was brought up in Oxford, before completing her degree in painting at Nottingham University. She began exhibiting her work in between travels and artists residencies, including at The Art Room in Oxford, and others overseas. She is now based in Bristol, where she has now set up her studio.