Emma McHold Burke

Emma is a multi-disciplinary artist who earned her BFA in Painting and Minor in Art History from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia.

Her practice relies heavily on the idea that failure is a generative process instead of a reductive one. The assertion that misinformation can be more valuable than information itself, expands the definitions of words like “painting”, “flag”, or “portal” in that they become interchangeable. Emma’s work hopes to take obsessive impulses and translate them into universal ideas about rest, grace, and acceptance. The role alternate materials play in her practice intends to encourage, and consequently validate, a child-like and inherent urge to touch, poke, and prod that she feels is present in any viewer regardless of their age. The tension between what is a socially accepted truth or behavior and the compulsion to cross those same boundaries fuels an analytic rebranding of “the unknown” or “forbidden”. Emma hopes that her work makes you feel that the words “uncertainty” and “potential” are synonymous. She hopes that the processes of investigating, dismantling, and questioning break away from any negative connotations and instead exist in a space that freely allows the development, building, and expansion of our reality.

She is excited by the idea that if we purposely embrace incorrect definitions or the misuse of materials and assign our own codified meanings to things that otherwise might seem mundane, gross, and uninteresting that the possibilities are endless !