Emma Cousin gained a High Honors degree from The Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford University, after gaining the highest mark in the country at Fine Art A-Level, Wakefield Girls High School. During her time at the Ruskin she won the National competition from the Boundary Figurative Art Gallery, London, where her work was included in an exclusive figurative art exhibition. After a sell out degree show attracting many collectors, Emma moved to Kent where she now works, frequently showing with galleries throughout London and the South.

Emma’s current shows include an exhibition in New York, a painting in Islington Tube commissioned by Islington Council, a community arts project in Yorkshire and a commission by the 20Eventi program in Rome. Emma is also looking forward to expanding on her work with charitable arts organizations Novas Gallery in Southwark, London and Arts Youth in Oxford, following this year’s successful exhibitions.

Emma works from found images, often old photographs or newspaper clippings. There is always a process of editing involved and the final image is one that she can’t stop thinking about and evokes something deeper than its surface. Her paintings give life to the arrested moment and slow time down in order to question the reality of perception and representation. It is a mode of painting that fuses reportage with the high philosophical imagination of fine art.

Emma is interested in how the meaning and content of a photographic image inevitably changes when reinvented into a painting, probing the role played by codes and conventions in forging our perception and understanding of the world, ourselves and our relationships. In this sense the subjects exist in an unfolding present inevitably permeated with a sense of déjà vu.