Emily Heath, Ordinary Things, 2022, Oil on canvas, 79x103cm, framed, The Corner Store Gallery.
Emily Heath - Ordinary Things
Ordinary Things is a celebration of the tenacity, joy, dedication, humour, and chaos that permeates my life as a working-from-home artist. It is an exploration of the endless balancing act of being a mother, wife and creator. The works blur the boundaries of domestic and artistic life, where household items or children’s toys playfully invade the composition as if they’re in the process of being tidied up. The exhibition also explores the bittersweet passing of childhood, highlighting the brevity of this period of innocence and playfulness, where the young child’s locus in the domestic sphere begins to expand and well-loved childhood toys are abandoned.
I love my job and am very privileged to be able to spend so much of my week painting but, like many of us, I feel the constant tension of professional and personal worlds colliding. Sometimes this sparks creativity, sometimes it creates frustration, and it often leads to humorous, unexpected outcomes in my art. For this exhibition, I chose to focus most of my attention on a series of smaller works that give the impression of a constellation of debris strewn across the gallery space. This emulates the ordinary but sometimes unexpected things that litter our house and my workspace, giving the viewer a glimpse of my artistic-domestic world.
Emily Heath, photograph by Athe Arifin.
Emily Heath, Making Dinner, 2022, Oil on canvas, 28x28cm, framed, The Corner Store Gallery.
Emily Heath, Wilting, 2023, Oil on canvas, 43x33cm, framed, The Corner Store Gallery.