Emma Mulrooney (b.1998) is an Irish figurative painter based in Limerick City. Originally from the rural plains of Offaly in the Irish midlands, Mulrooney’s work explores the body as a vulnerable landscape shaped by inherited memory, transformation, and myth. Working primarily with oil on canvas and wood panel, she draws from ancient Celtic belief systems to create atmospheric and otherworldly figures that exist in states of flux and becoming. Occupying spaces between presence and absence, warmth and unease, her subjects gradually reveal themselves through the intuitive process of continuous layering, removal, and reconstruction.

Through this, Mulrooney engages with the body’s capacity to express that which resists language, approaching painting as a space where otherness, cultural identity and spiritual longing can coexist.

Rooted in emotional and material experimentation, her work seeks to uncover something tender and honest within all the uncertainty of human experience.  

Mulrooney recently completed her final year of Fine Art Painting at Limerick School of Art and Design. She curated a group exhibition titled Carnal Echoes (2025) at the People’s Museum of Limerickand presented her solo exhibition Warmth & Agony: A Parting (2025) at Spacecraft Studios, Limerick City.

Her practice is informed by a desire for exchange and reflection, and views communal creative spaces as environments where valuable dialogue and research allow for significant transformation within the work itself.