Mathew (TELL): So, I said we don’t have to be formal, but there are these little buckets I was thinking about… but I want to talk about the basics of your origin story, just so I have those here and now to play with, and then we can kind of jump around a bit. I’d want to go deeper into Emma, but there are things about Nightclub and Hair and Nails Gallery and the ecosystem that I think we should include.

Emma: What types of information are you looking for?

Mathew (TELL): I guess: are you self-taught? Are you formally educated? I think you said you did some teaching. I’m just curious about this path to getting where you are. You don’t have to tell every single detail, but just lead up to how you got here.

EMMA: I guess my more real beginning to art making began in undergrad. While growing up I would go to bob ross style classes with my sister usually but it wasn’t a serious consideration. I was initially going to go to school for psychology and or biology in undergrad. I really liked the idea of working in a lab

I ended up taking a painting class in undergrad my freshman year and I was like, “Oh, I kind of like this actually” which maybe shouldn’t have been a surprise. Maybe I knew I’d be into it but felt like it wasn’t a reasonable direction. With this I considered overlapping this new interest in some form of art therapy, but I ended up just going fully towards art, and painting primarily. So that’s kind of how that started. It just kind of was natural, but kind of unexpected.

And yeah, painting kind of started to feel a little bit stiff or methodic after undergrad. So I completely left painting for several years…I started making weird objects and installations to get to the root of what I was interested in beyond image making. A lot of these materials were found items through surfing Facebook Marketplace, things on the side of the road… charged objects.

I was doing this so I could understand why I was painting, because with the paintings—I felt really distant from them at that point. I learned a lot through this process. And then I think I really came back to painting in… When was that? The first fully painting oriented Hair and Nails show I was in? I think it was in 2023. That’s when I was like, “I actually really love painting.”

I came back to it on my own terms and it just made sense given my parameters (working in a house and not having a studio). So that’s kind of…

Mathew (TELL): Wait, so that’s wild. You kind of became “Emma Beatrez, the painter” in the world only in 2023, just by coming back to it, and then the Hair and Nails show?

Emma: Yeah, I think so.

Mathew (TELL): Wow. Okay. This is like… I didn't even know the whole origin story, so you came back to it, and then they were like, “Oh my god, this is great”?

Emma: Well, I don’t know about that, but I personally was definitely more excited about it. It was just fun to do again, which goes a long way—you know, feeling that energy. But yeah, I was mostly just making objects for a while.

Mathew (TELL): Cool… Now I want to go even further back. You grew up in New Prague? What was the mention of “out in the mud”? Who were you when you were just this kid in New Prague, versus who you are now? Or maybe they’re the same?

Emma:Um… I was in show choir and plays and musicals and stuff like that. That’s kind of what I was more interested in in high school, that’s what all my friends were doing too. But I was never anything prominent in that. I was always a chorus girl. So that was primarily what I was doing.

Mathew (TELL): Cheerleading also?

Emma:No, No. I think that’s been a very unexpected direction in my work that isn’t as obvious as some of the other choices because that isn’t my direct background.

I was a figure skater. That was my main focus from elementary school through high school, and then I kind of quit that after leaving for college. But I was doing a lot of competitions and early morning practice most days. I was training to be a pairs figure skater for a while, which was pretty intense, especially for a third grader.

Emma:Yeah.

Mathew (TELL): Wow. Okay. Yeah, that takes a lot… for sure. How old were you when this happened?

Emma: I think I was in third grade.

Mathew (TELL): Damn. I guess you do have to start early.

Emma: Well, yeah. And they want really tiny people, to be able to throw them around. So it was perfect for that.

Mathew (TELL): Wait, and then, what about the mud? I wanted to go back to that.

Emma: Oh. Yeah. So I grew up in the country. It’s rural. In between New Prague and Prior Lake, but in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by farmland.

The place we moved onto the summer after 1st grade was just a plowed dirt field, basically. We moved to this dirt lot and lived in a camper for, I think, a year and a half while we were building a house. I was like, yeah—just a muddy, nasty little kid. And my mom was pregnant at the time, it was just complete chaos for everybody for a year.

Mathew (TELL): Did that stick in your mind as a deep experience?

Emma: Oh yeah. No, we loved it. It was such a fun existence as a child. It was the best time... just crazy kids running around, riding dirt bikes/4 wheelers, doing whatever. I have a scar from a burn on the inside of my leg from wiping out on a mini dirt bike as a child. It was great honestly

Mathew (TELL): Yeah, that sounds great. I love that. So do you think this person you’ve become as an adult is a break from that girl, or her final form? Because knowing this about you now I’m like, “Oh, that sounds right.” Figure skating and dirt biking and the whole nine yards feels very… right on.

Emma: I don’t feel like I’ve left that. I think I’ve come back to it with more of an appreciation, probably.

Because I felt a little resistant to that for a while, but I think it was more so… I liked that lifestyle and I liked doing things like that. It was more of the things/ideas that surround that —it just didn’t really align with me. But it’s not really about that. The location is great. Maybe I don’t know how to word that correctly, but maybe you understand.

Mathew (TELL): I can relate. Like, you had a resistance to some of the culture, then as an adult you’re like, “Oh, I can appreciate what was freeing about that culture.”

Emma: Yeah. I can take bits of that. I still have bits of that, and I can appreciate those bits more now then back then.

Mathew (TELL): Yeah, you learn to take what you want and leave the rest?

Emma: Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Mathew (TELL): I totally relate. I’m thinking, just like, how I couldn’t wait to get out of my small town, but then realizing when we used to do four-wheeling or something—how awesome that was.

Emma: Yeah, exactly.

Mathew (TELL): On that note… and that kind of living in the Midwest… do you feel like your work is of the Midwest or against it? Or both, maybe?

Emma: I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently. I like to say that my work is inspired by my Midwestern upbringing, but I think that looks like a certain thing to people. It’s not really necessarily the look of the space. It’s more of a way to enter understanding imagery, I guess.So it’s not going to have this specific content. It’s more of a lens.

Mathew (TELL): Yeah, the lens. For me personally, I find your work somewhat to be a mirror—but a mirror that might kind of freak people out, because that lens is “different”. Like the Christmas village, or the cheerleaders. The same experience happened for someone else in the Midwest from a different vantage point then how you were viewing it.

Emma: I literally have written that down. I’m working on holding a mirror up to situations for reevaluation through my lens. That’s really how I’m thinking.

Mathew (TELL): Yeah, that’s how I felt. Obviously, the “Jessica,” as I call her (your painting I purchased)… You captured something that I witnessed in my youth, thinking… “That’s what I saw, even though I thought I was crazy, because I knew everyone else saw something else.”

Emma: Yeah, you’re kind of looking around the room like, “I don’t know—are we experiencing the same thing here?"

Mathew (TELL): Watching crazy cheerleaders, and they’re like, “We’re so so happy,” and you’re witnessing this death stare.

Emma: And I mean, I don’t feel any negativity towards it at all. It’s just an interesting thing to witness.

Mathew (TELL): I guess I find some of your work validating. Like, “Oh, I wasn’t crazy,” or, “Other people saw the same thing, I just thought I was mostly on my own.” Thinking… does anyone else think this is weird?

Emma: Yeah, yeah. I never really know. Usually when I’m working on what’s gonna come next, I’m digging. I’ll look through a lot of archive photos at the library. Or just spend hours and hours looking at photographs on eBay.

I try not to get so into planning the next step at first, because I want to surprise even myself with what I’m responding to. I feel like I’m forgetting a lot of things, so I’m trying to reintroduce information to myself, if that makes sense.

Mathew (TELL): Yeah, no, that leads into one of the questions, around... Are you painting from memory? Which I know you told me in some cases, no. Or are you painting the story America kind of sold us as children?

Emma: I think that’s a good question.

I think memory is an interesting subject to dive into and it tends to be such an easy thing to touch on in terms of artwork because its so universal and individual but honestly I guess you could say I’m bending my memories and it could be like lifting a veil on something I once ‘knew’ but now know better. I think that's the best way to describe it maybe? 

Living in a constant state of new and contradicting information is a wild existence. Screaming into the void

Mathew (TELL): From what you learned...do you sometimes paint from memory, like a memory you literally had? I know you often will paint from a still frame or something...you mentioned Days of Our Lives or something referential, but not maybe direct memory.

Emma: I’m not painting directly from my head. I don’t have that skill, and that’s not something I feel very confident in doing. It’s more like I’m refabricating memories through collages, through mashing things together. Making collages through personal photos and found photos for me is a more intuitive way for me to develop a sketch and once I move to the canvas I can play with how I can interpret this idea with paint. I’m using memory as a way to reinterpret something else, or create something that’s not even an actual memory, but is based on memory. Not actually a real space.

Mathew (TELL): You’re not just painting from soap operas then?

Emma:Not necessarily. I find threads tend to unravel and lead to other points whenI’m developing a show. It tends to have a starting point, most times branching off previous works and then from there things start crossing in unexpected ways.

While working I was thinking a lot about the basement as a space I was going to be exhibiting in and what that has to offer the work. Like, the paintings are collections of snapshots that are happening simultaneously in another basement elsewhere and are brought back to this space for examination. 

I think they both carry the same weight in a way that I really like.

Mathew (TELL): I guess we must have similar family structures, because I thought, “Oh, I’ve been in this space before.” We were watching Days of Our Lives, the Christmas village is up behind us… There are things that aren’t innately Midwestern, but I’ve been in this space before.

Emma: Yeah. I mean, even the bedding and the wallpaper and the type of frame that’s in that bedroom where she’s located…that’s my grandma’s spare bedroom.

Mathew (TELL): Right. You can feel it.

Emma: It feels very familiar in a way that… I think that’s what makes the image so…

Mathew (TELL): Like the cheerleaders. I felt like I was experiencing what I thought was psychotic—the Christmas village put up with fake snow. My grandma had this whole village, and in the background is Young and the Restless or Days of Our Lives or whatever, and she was probably drinking, like, sweet wine.

Emma: Yeah, that sounds about right.

Mathew (TELL): I want to move into “eyes, bodies, and the unseen.” I had questions about when you obscure faces and a lot of the eyes not having pupils. If there was something psychological there… like refusal? That’s the word I came up with. You have a style where you don’t paint really fine details, including pupils and retinas, but it really feels like the eyes are kind of missing.

Emma:I definitely think refusal is a great word to bring in. I’m interested in that breaking of the connection between the figures in the painting and if you are allowed to look into their eyes theres nothing there. I think stylistically I like that push and pull. I think specific identities are not necessary in these works. They can be anyone. The specificity of the situation paired with the ambiguity of the figure is important. Its like choreography. I like the feeling of holding your breath but like not in a way of like awe its more of like not getting the relief of an exhale 

EMMA: I don’t want to know who these people are. Once I dial in the faces, that part becomes more important than the situation, which is not my intention. So that’s why I do that or why I allow for more of this… that can melt away.

Mathew (TELL): That needs to be brought up a little more, because it does fuse even with the…Your actual title is called Heat, right? What you just said crystallizes for me being like, “Oh, she was called Chastity; then Jessica, now she’s just…”I couldn’t even land on a name, because she’s maybe an amalgamation of something and not literally this one person or another.

Mathew (TELL): Do you find them to be erotic and violent? Those are the words that came to mind for me, but I’m curious if you feel the same way.

Emma: I think the voyeuristic elements of the painting allow for that to come through, but it’s not always in the forefront. I do like voyeurism and that sort of framing of situations, just because I like the energy of that.

Mathew (TELL): So, that makes sense… it’s not like you’re overtly trying to paint something erotic or violent, but the voyeuristic quality lends itself one way or the other.

Emma: Yeah. Yep. And I think I’m really into energy in general, and ramping up the energy in any way possible. That can look like a lot of different things in different situations, obviously, but it’s always a concern of mine. Also in spaces, the energy has to reach a point of almost breaking, but not allowing it to spill over.

Mathew (TELL): Now I have two technical questions I didn’t include in the first prompts, but you just made me think of them. A lot of your paintings come from flash photography… even the carousel painting feels like it was caught on flash.

Emma: Yeah, a lot of them are. I just like the look of that… I really like evidence photos and the gathering of information in that way. Kinda oddly clinical? But through the process of painting I think it injects the imagery with a sort of care or obsessive quality? With images like that, again it’s like holding a mirror up to the situation or documenting it as is. It’s so imperfect that it feels good.

Mathew: Do you think you’ll do more around soap operas? Just out of curiosity.

Emma: I don’t see this as an immediate thread to follow for long at the moment but hey, I think everything is on the table right now. Many times I will come back to things a lot later when it makes sense and it will feel like an aha moment of things coming full circle which I LOVE.

Mathew (TELL): Right. And then the other question I had… that’s also technical, but I feel like you can romance it a little, is around the newer set of paintings where the woman’s transitioning into a demon. You talked about painting that from a moving image and freeze-framing. How did you develop the style of painting the digital movement, the space between? It was fascinating when you explained it the other night. I thought maybe you painted the same picture four times and then painted over it, but you’re painting from whatever movement is happening inside the still frame?

Emma: Yeah, the specific special effects used in that show are so tangible and clunky that it allows for the transition to be super draggy. So you’re able to get a lot of nice tight overlap.

I was painting from the images I screen captured; bringing up each piece all together. I would go back and forth between each one in consecutive pairs, making sure that’s consistent throughout.

Otherwise sometimes I can get a little crazy with colors, just because it’s like zoning in further and further on an image…you’re going to find other things. Or isolating areas…you’re going to find other colors because your eyes want to make things up sometimes.

But yeah, it was more like printer mode. Another layer, another layer, another layer. Working on two next to each other, then going back, then going to the next two. 

Mathew (TELL): In my head it could have been both and like you said, if you took an iPhone photo and zoomed in really deep it starts to break apart some of the color and blur. But when I first looked at those, it looked like VHS...the drag in the transition. It doesn’t feel like modern technology; it feels like something filmy or VHS-esque or something.

Emma: Yeah, it’s a terrible, terrible quality YouTube video that I was screen-capturing from.

Mathew: So cool. Let’s see… important to talk about. I want to talk about melodrama, the pageantry of American performance…if that’s something interesting for you. I’ve noticed the carousel, the banquet hall chandelier, the woman who seems almost like a beauty queen turning into a demon, and obviously all the cheerleaders. Is that mostly going back to your voyeuristic quality? Is it a voyeuristic look at American performance?

Emma: I think I’m attracted to the metaphorical and sometimes actual glittery surfaces that have a curious depth or history underneath. 

Mathew (TELL): I think just because you mentioned the soap opera, I was like, “Is there something more around observing the spectacle of American performance?” Especially growing up in a small town—what that kind of pageantry looks like is different.

Emma: I feel like pageantry in a small town is somehow way more heightened and nonstop. Whatever that thing is, it becomes the talk of the town. I think this goes beyond the more obvious and down to the very specific.

Mathew (TELL): Maybe I’ll flip to: you mentioned the soap opera as a reference point. Is that conflated with the show? Are you conflating that show with Midwestern nostalgia, or is it just where you’re from but not necessarily completely related?

Emma:I just like that it’s a soap opera based in the Midwest (or supposedly in the Midwest) but it’s actually not even a real place. It’s been going on for so long and they cover literally every single topic…even a demon possession topic, which seems completely random.

I just like that. They’re just like, “We’re just gonna do it all.”

I thought that was kind of interesting and very relatable as a Midwestern show. Just these things that are kind of overlooked, but everything is happening here. Anything and everything all at once. That’s how I was thinking about it.

Mathew (TELL): Cool. I want to move to Lee Noble (Your partner) as a counterpart… maybe a little background on you and Lee meeting. But I also want to dive into: what does it mean being partnered with another artist in life, and then also running Nightclub Gallery together?

Emma: We met in grad school in 2018. His studio was kitty-corner from mine in the basement.

Honestly, I was so shy. I was so nervous to talk to him. I would invite him to go do stuff and then I would cancel last minute because I got really nervous. 

But eventually we started dating, and it was a secret for a while. We were keeping it from all of our classmates.

Mathew (TELL): What does it do to both of your practices—being together? Or what has it done in terms of your art practices?

Emma: I think that I’ve never met another person that completely gets where I’m coming from, without even having to ask. There’s just a complete understanding, which is pretty amazing.

I think that works really well with our curation and running a space, because there’s 100% trust between both of us. We just have very similar sensibilities. It’s just really cool to have a person like that in my life.

Mathew (TELL): For better or worse. I thought the analogy was: are you separate universes, or the same universe? Now it sounds like you’re in the same universe but gravitationally floating around each other.

Emma: I think our work is not really that close. But we have… yeah, we’re revolving.

Mathew (TELL): Do you ever find, similar to in basic couple life, you start dressing the same—that in your artistic practice, you ever feel like you’re merging into one creature?

Emma: We definitely end up dressing alike the more we’ve been together. Like I said before I think we have similar sensibilities or taste when it comes to artwork but since school our practices have both changed alongside one another. We have in past worked on projects together like we make perfumes together all the time but thats kinda an us thing vs our own practices thing.

Mathew (TELL): Do you feed each other’s monsters now, maybe not in a direct way?

Emma: I think so. I don’t know if it’s a monster, but it’s something.

Mathew (TELL): As in, replace “monster” with “practice.” Do they meet each other directly? And then Nightclub—was that kind of a counter-move in your relationship with each other? How did that come about?

Emma: During grad school Lee and I started a school club named Night Club where we would order pizza and have a scheduled experimental lecture, workshop, and/or exercise led by one of us two or a guest artist. This didn’t last very long due to the pandemic; school ended up shutting down after several meetings. After grad school we were both doing the Franconia residency together. We applied together and were living there for three months. Prior to the end of the residency I ended up getting a teaching job, so we had to leave early, and we had to move somewhere pretty quickly. This is the house that came up through a friend of a friend.

We were like, “Okay, I guess we’re gonna live in a house now.”

It has some really weird characteristics, such as the big front window and a small room in the front that may have once existed as a porch.

At that time—it was 2020—all of the galleries’ programming was put on pause. The art scene kind of ceased to exist, or a lot of spaces closed.

We were just kind of like… it felt like there was something really lacking in the art community here and we have extra space to utilize in the house and it seemed to be a fitting place where we could host exhibitions. We decided to bring back the Night Club name but this time as a gallery.

Maybe it was kind of a selfish thing, but also a  “What can we do?” to participate and connect with others thing.

Mathew (TELL): Was it kind of practical though too?

Emma: Yeah, it was practical and a little bit selfish, because we wanted something. So we decided to just do it ourselves and see what happens.

We did not anticipate for it to continue on for this long, to be honest with you.

Mathew (TELL): You turned your house or living room into a gallery, before moving to the St. Paul space.

Emma: Yeah, we were having shows in our house for like a year and a half, maybe.

I guess I will quickly summarize the reasoning for jumping around locations: We applied and received the VAF grant to support the exhibition schedule at our house, so we were able to give people pretty decent stipends to create exhibitions here.

At this point we weren’t looking to get a storefront. We randomly applied for the grow downtown program in St. Paul and got matched with a (subsidized rent for a period of time) huge rental property. So we were like, “Okay, I guess we’re really gonna do this.” This space came with a handful of difficulties such as no AC or heat (which gets complicated in winter during open hours), lack of parking, and just the ability for two people working full time jobs to also organize shows in a 1,900 sq/ft space and also operate it on our own. Eventually we decided it wasn’t a sustainable way of working. 

We applied for the 2025 VAF grant with the idea that if we were to get it we could maybe get another storefront or a basement or closet somewhere, anywhere. Which brings us to our facebook marketplace storefront space find where we’re at today.

Mathew (TELL): What do you feel like Nightclub serves up best? What’s your stake in the ground with Nightclub versus other spaces?

Emma: We’ve been able to find a lot of the artists we work with outside of the traditional white cube network. As a small arist-run gallery space we have the ability to be more flexible in how we operate. For us there is very little concern with the marketability of the work we show. We are able to only show the work we love regardless of most concerns a normal gallery might face.

Mathew (TELL): You’re showing in a basement and not a white cube. The location obviously did something to the energy of the work. You already explained some of this—between the possession and the Christmas scene. Is there anything else you want to comment on? We were talking about subterranean vibes. Was that an influence—that it was going to be in the basement? Or did it just kind of…

Emma: Yeah, I think initially I wasn’t going to show any paintings. But I just got excited closer to the deadline and kept making work, making paintings.

I was thinking about the basement as a character involved in every work. It is kind of the baseline for what comes after.

I liked that during the opening, people didn’t understand where some of the pieces were, even though they were right in front of them. They thought those things existed in that space already.

Several of the pieces were hidden in plain sight I suppose, even though people were looking directly at them. Which made it feel like the magic of the basement was happening.

Mathew (TELL): I was gonna say, for you it feels, knowing your work a little, maybe unexpected, maybe that’s why it’s confusing, but also kind of apropos. If you know your work well enough—someone in a basement? Yeah, that makes sense. Do you like the subterranean? Does that feel closer to the subconscious?

Emma: I think there’s just way more to work with in the basement. I just like the feel of it. It feels like a found object already. Also maybe its the slow reveal of the space as you move down the stairs is nice.

The space enhances the other pieces that are inspired by found objects or found situations. So it just makes more sense.

If it was upstairs, the pacing would be completely wrong.

I loved the wood-slotted wall for the wood veneer painting—those two crossing and creating friction is really nice.

I’m into the crossover of items and images and text.

The cords in the painting—the tangled cords—and the candles working as a bridge. They’re Christmas candles for that display, but they’re also necessary for an exorcism.

Mathew (TELL): I didn’t think about how you said that—if you had just moved the pieces upstairs. Even if it might be something to someone, it does…

Emma: Yeah, it would be really hard for me, I think.

Mathew (TELL): I think even my husband—because I was pointing out the scythe to him, and he was like… I don’t think he knew it was part of the show.

Emma: Yeah, exactly.

Mathew (TELL): You’re on your way to Untitled Miami in December. I referred to it as an international art casino for fun. What do you want people there to feel from the person who grew up an hour outside of Minneapolis? Is that even part of the story?

Emma: Yeah. I did take some aspects of previous works and bring them into this again, but because it’s Miami, I tried to go a little more over the top.

Things are a little more exaggerated, more tropical. That was my intention with this work—it’s me, but pushing things a bit further.

In exhibitions I tend to be a little obsessive of how pieces go together, spacing, how the body might experience the work while moving through the space, etc. It will be interesting to take some of that out of the mix for the fair and allow the work to do some of that communicating through the imagery in a white cube.

MATHEW: Think about it more. I was literally thinking what you said—fairs are weird. Especially knowing your work, seeing it literally in this basement, and thinking how much sense that makes. Then bringing that work into this international casino of art…

EMMA: Yeah, I feel like I have a dualistic relationship to art fairs. It’s so overstimulating and you see so much work all at once which can be fun. I like being able to see a lot of work in person for the first time by artists I admire. That’s the best part. 

I guess one thing—for the fair I was trying to undo how I was thinking about making work.

At this very point with my work, I don’t think it made much sense to debut a whole brand new body of work at a fair, it made more sense to play around and push forward some of my recent explorations.

This to me feels like a closing of the cheerleader work. I feel like some of the newer work in the Hair and Nails exhibition might be a hint at where I’d like to go.

MATHEW: Okay, cool. That leads into transformation and possession. Up until now, the themes have been bodies of cheerleaders on bonfires, children in formation, ritualistic scenes.

EMMA: I do think the ritualistic aspect of the work is important. I’m never going to leave that, because it’s so ingrained in me.

That’s how I was raised—going to Catholic school and all of these things that revolve around that.

So that’s just in me even if I’ve left that behind.

MATHEW: So that feels like a constant. You might move out of the cheerleader subject matter, but…

EMMA: Yeah, but it doesn’t mean that’s disconnected from everything else or more important to me than other imagery I have explored. I just happened to linger there for a bit longer, which I think I haven’t allowed myself to do since coming back to painting. I think it gave me a better understanding of how I like to work.

I’m really interested in the uncanny—uncanny images or situations—and how you reevaluate information through seeing that.

That’s where my head is, for the most part.

Obviously I’m thinking through a web of information and interests, and there are wires that get crossed constantly.

I also have a hard time sitting still with something, because I’m always like, “Oh my gosh, I need more and more in every direction.”

So it’s hard to say what the next thing is going to look like, but I’m excited to keep pushing the paintings forward, in addition to the surfaces.

I think that came through in the most recent works I made, the heads and the levitation painting at hair and nails—something happening with the light and the surface that I’m really enjoying. 

MATHEW: I wondered if death is a shadow theme in your workl, or maybe the main event? Even if it’s not literal. It feels somewhat overshadowing for some reason.

EMMA: Um, I don’t think death is in it much. Or I guess I’m not thinking about it in a way where that is the subject matter. 

MATHEW: I wanted to talk to you about it because it resonated for me in a weird way. None of them are literally about death, but…

EMMA: I think there might be a taste or feeling of that but its never illustrated. I think the darkness or uncanny-ness allows that to come through. Like there’s maybe a hint of violence without actually being violent?

I guess sometimes choices I make are not obvious in the end but it comes through in the way the piece is made. Like in regards to what the image is actually doing, like is role, or purpose before I take that away. In the group of work for Miami theres a painting of a funerary bouquet, and it’s only important for me to know that it’s a funerary bouquet, because at this point it’s so cropped. I hope that the way this information is rendered allows for the secret is holds outside of the picture plane to come through. If that makes sense? I think that comes back to the idea of energy and where its and held

MATHEW: Do you think there’s a question you keep chasing that you haven’t answered yet? Or is it just evolving..like you mentioned ritual, but is there a greater question you’re…

EMMA: I was trying to write stuff last night, and I read an article and thought this line was kind of nice. It’s not perfect for what I’m trying to do, but it’s actually pretty obvious:

“A painting should not strive to communicate a predetermined moral standpoint, but might encourage the viewer to reconsider theirs.”

That’s something I’m always thinking about as well.

I’ve never been that interested in developing a question/answer. It’s more of a feeling. It’s intuition versus something I’m looking for.

That is what drives me.

It’s hard to grasp, I guess.

MATHEW: Emma, that feels right...hearing you say it’s not a question that drives you but a feeling. The rituals and a lot of the moments feel like they’re from intuition and feeling more than from a question.

EMMA: Yeah. And I guess that creates more questions. Which is always fun.

MATHEW: Way more. We’ll wrap up a little with future self. What does success look like for you? Which is kind of a boring question, but I don’t want to leave it at boring.

Is it more scale, more rooms, more darkness? Something smaller, stranger, more intimate?

Maybe it’s not all monetary. What does it look like in your head?

EMMA: What does success look like…I think for me, one type of success recently is being able to do what I want and have the audience… like, they’re with me. They’re trusting me.

I’m trying to get better about trusting myself and trusting my intuition and just being able to see that other people see what I’m seeing, or understand what I’m talking about without me having to over explain, like we’re speaking the same language. I’m not overly concerned with ‘audience’ because Im making for myself but its been really cool to be able to connect with other people through the work, its really lovely.

Them feeling the same thing I’m feeling, which I think you do. That feels like a recent success to me.

MATHEW: I told you that story about my mom, but it reminded me—she saw the painting from a distance and was like, “Oh my, that is a beautiful painting,” in a cheery voice.

Then she got closer and was like, “Ah!”

I kind of wondered for a minute if she got it.

EMMA: Yeah, I think she did.

MATHEW: And then she got scared that she got it.

EMMA: Yeah. It’s been really interesting to have conversations with my extended family members about some of these works I’ve been making, and they’re like, “Okay, so what’s happening? What’s going on?” And then I explain, and they’re like, “Oh yeah, okay, so that’s literally what it is.”

I’m like, “Yeah.”

You don’t need someone to tell you how to read it. You have all the tools. Everybody has all the tools they need to understand any artwork, in my opinion.