Emma Mulrooney is a fine-art painter based in Limerick / Offaly, Ireland. Exploring the body as a landscape of archetype and symbols, her work engages with the mysteries of the psyche and the human forms capacity to express that which resists language.
Working primarily in oil on canvas and wood panel, she draws upon ancient Celtic belief systems and folklore to investigate how personal and collective histories are carried through the body. Often existing as both presence and void, or portals to the unknown, her figures are in a constant state of flux and becoming. Embodying themes of fracture and disconnect, spiritual longing, isolation, gender identity, and human connection, they investigate the nature of both memory and the absurd as mechanisms for self-understanding. Her figures dwell within an interplay of psychological vulnerability and bestial grit, where each subject carries their own pathos and weight of personal experience.
ARTIST STATEMENT
With an emphasis on the body as a sacred well of inherent worth, Mulrooney's figures are imbued with fluidity and atmospheric charge, aligning them with the forces of the natural world. Her experimental painting process means that each work holds within it a residue of transformation.
It is through continual additions and subtractions of paint layers that these bizarre entities gradually reveal themselves. This process allows Mulrooney to develop a deeper understanding of the image and subject matter as they emerge.
It is through this practice that Mulrooney seeks to uncover something tender and honest amongst all the uncertainty of human experience.