Emily Gregory-Smith
Landscape, and in particular my surroundings in the Rheidol valley and the coastal area of West Wales is my main preoccupation. Something fundamental about these places, a rawness, attracts me: its seasonal patterns and ever-shifting skies; sometimes just the bare elements of perhaps the light, or water's ebb and flood.
With the viscosity of oil paint I am able to work into the paintings layer upon layer - sculpting, scraping, brushing, with a language of shadows from the great history of landscape painting. It is usually a fairly demanding process: things revealed, lost or scraped off, re-found, sometimes many times over, until the image seems to shimmer with life and 'lift', like the light over the river.
Originally from Cambridgeshire, Emily studied in Leeds and Madrid before moving to West Wales seven years ago. In 2005 she completed her Master's degree in Fine Art at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She shows regularly in West Wales Arts Centre, Fishguard and in other venues in England and Wales.