“Trying to change the way you see the world by painting worlds you have to change to see.” (Also silly-goosing on insta @emcampbellart)

Em is an emerging artist from Maryland working in the water-based mediums of gouache, India inks, and watercolors. Her work in the community helps kids learn a love of art, and her work to promote conservation efforts flows from a soul-deep love of the natural world.

Growing up in the South, Em spent many hours outdoors gardening with her father and playing in the woods with her brothers. These quiet, natural moments sparked a love for plants and wildlife, and the young creative began to write short stories and draw the accompanying pictures. Reaching for a career in the arts, Em studied under Maja Godlewska, Associate Professor of Art at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. 

Over the years, as education and opportunity allowed, Em developed her talents and worked as a private art tutor, took client commissions, partnered with non-profits, and organized art events and classes for kids in her local area. 

Today, Em, her husband, and their two teenagers, live and work in the Annapolis area of Maryland where they volunteer, attend church, and Em teaches in the community. Being a mother gives her less time to daydream and create, but the passion for capturing the elemental beauty of the natural world is still strong. Grabbing a few hours a week in her little home studio, Em has successfully been able to produce a number of unique collections featuring florals, seascapes, abstract landscapes, and many colorful birds that have been commissioned and acquired by collectors, displayed in galleries, and won awards. 

Themes of sea, sky, wilderness, and wings run through all of her work, and over the years this has taken Em on a journey into advocacy for conservation. The swirling ink worlds and planets that emerged from studying trees and wildlife, force the viewer to bend and twist to see the whole work. This has become the metaphor the artist uses to start conservation conversations. Inspired by the contrast between the fragility & strength of nature, Em’s work often includes endangered species and threatened landscapes. The goal is to draw viewers in, provoke thought, and prompt personal action. Recently, Em began a new partnership with A Rocha International to help fund and promote their conservation work. Though she customarily has worked small (8-24in), her current body of work is exploring her favorite themes, but on a larger scale, hoping to reach a new audience of collectors.

“I want to change the way you see the world by painting worlds you have to change to see. To savor the painted scene, one is forced to adjust the way they approach it. To save our planet, one is forced to adjust the way they live. To preserve and restore the wild and beautiful requires each of us to move in ways we may not expect or initially be comfortable with, but the reward is life itself.”