Emma Coyle
London
[b. 1981 Dublin, Ireland] Represented by Helwaser Gallery, 833 Madison Ave, New York. London representation at Arte Globale in Covent Garden.
MessageCoyle has been progressing her paintings for over 20 years, firstly driven by an influence from America Pop art of the 1960’s. Coyle graduated in 2003 and has been based in London since 2006.
Represented by the Helwaser gallery on Madison Avenue in New York who hosted a solo show of Coyle’s paintings in 2022 titled ‘The Best Revenge’. The exhibition was listed 12th in GalleriesNow’s August Special, ‘The 30 most popular exhibitions on now’[worldwide]. Artnet listed the show in its ‘5 sizzling emerging artists, the Artnet Gallery Network recommends checking out before summer’s end’[worldwide].
Work represented in London by Arte Globale in Covent Garden, Contemporary Collective at Somerset House and The Marylebone Gallery W1.
Coyle is a recipient of International Art Market’s Gold List award. ‘Top international contemporary artist of today', ‘Recommended artist to invest in and to be inspired by’, with work acquired by past Tate Museum Trustee Dame Janet Wolfson de Botton.
Coyle’s first education in art in the 1990’s included an introduction to 1st wave New York Pop Art of the 1960’s. Her current figurative work focuses on the use of contemporary fashion magazine imagery and advertisements, to produce painterly images of a Fine Art quality. Combining primary and secondary line work with ideas in abstraction, minimalism and negative space.
Earlier in her career Coyle exhibited in many galleries in Ireland and exhibited for the Irish National Portrait exhibition in 2005. Coyle also exhibited for charities in the Royal Hibernian Academy and Adam’s Fine Art auctioneers. Just before moving to London Coyle had solo exhibitions in the Signal Art Centre in Co. Wicklow and the Bank of Ireland’s art centre in Dublin and was described as ‘one of the city’s most promising new artist’ {Metro Life newspaper- January 2006}, and was also described as a ‘rising young artist’ {Irish Independent- May 2006}.
Coyle’ work was selected by Los Angeles curator Bridget Carron for her collection Power Pop on Saatchi’ online gallery in 2014. In 2018 Coyle’ painting 12.16.07 won the Artness Magazine cover competition and won her an Artist of the Year 2019; Honorable Mention Award from Circle Foundation in France and another Honorable Mention Award from New York’s Grey Cube gallery in 2022. In 2019 her painting series ‘12.16’ also won her a Special Artist Award from BESTART. In April 2020 painting Linda no.1 receive a review from Dab Art Co. Los Angeles, and in 2021 won a Finalist Award from Art Show International also in Los Angeles and a Distinguished Award from Canada’s ArtAscent Magazine.
Her recently completed painting series ’Linda’ and ‘Binary’ deal with embracing and disrupting formal composition. For the first time in 2020 Coyle chose to paint mixed white backgrounds in certain pieces, mixing colours is very important to each piece. This work earned an online review in 2020 from Dab Art Co. in Los Angeles and an inclusion in their current Artsy exhibition. Also, in 2021 Coyle was awarded a Distinguished Award from Canada’s ArtAscent magazine and a Finalist Award from Los Angeles’ Art Show International.
This year Coyle continues her work in figurative art with her ‘Sw16’ series, based on contemporary print media images. Painting Sw16.1 received a Finalist Award from Art Show International in Los Angeles in 2022. Most recently in 2022, her new work won awards from art organizations including Florida’s Light Space Time gallery and additional awards from the Circle Foundation and Grey Cube gallery. Coyle has also completed a body of fifty watercolour paintings which she spoke about in February’s 2023 interview in NYC’s Occhi magazine. The series is a result of an intense period of work, to see how the medium of watercolour used in a contemporary manner would affect the outcome of the paintings produced.
2023 sees the production of her largest painting to date. A canvas that will stretch to nearly four meters wide. The painting is currently at a three quarter completion stage.
Through Coyle’s career her work has appeared on the cover and within many publications including The Times (UK), London's Mayfair Times (UK), Avari art (USA), A5 (UK), Al-Tiba9 (Spain), M&Art (Sweden) and Visions Libres (Germany) to name a few. Also, on the covers of Level 25 art journal (USA), Emergo (Netherlands), Litro (UK), and Kapa magazine (Greece).
Interviews with the artist have been published in many online and print magazines, including Art Reveal, Murze art magazine, Family Office Elite magazine and Artjobs.com. In 2022 Coyle was interview for Yale University Radio in America.
Coyle also continually works on still life in oils, an abstract painting project, woodblock prints and works in photography using Polaroid and 120mm camera formats.
[Coyle has interests in horticulture, palaeontology, film noir and is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society and Wigmore Hall]
Statement
I have always produced strong imagery working from a Fine Art background. After living in Dublin, a brief stay in New York City and now being based in London, it has given me the opportunity to find out what mediums and painting processes I am most passionate about.
I currently use current print media imagery and advertisements as a starting point for my figurative paintings. I feel that my work represents the original theme in Pop art from the 1950’s, using contemporary images in a contemporary manner. Although I use media imagery as a starting point, I do not intend to create familiar or aesthetically pleasing paintings. Each painting is completed from an interest in the action of painting.
I am constantly collecting images from print magazines, whether I am working on an on-going series of paintings or not. I choose an image which to me is solely strong in form, this is most important for me to produce a strong painting. I use images which the media choose to represent modern times and my choices then represents an interest in strength of imagery not necessarily the subject matter. Using acrylic on canvas allows me to achieve the right colour pallet for my large-scale paintings.
Every few years I carefully select and group images together. I work on tracings and drawings for months at a time to manipulate the images, and then continue through to painting. As I work on each image, I minimise details and line as I am very interested in minimalism and abstraction.
The most important aspects in each painting are line work, colour, and composition.
I use primary and secondary lines to convey harmonies between negative space. I draw on primed canvas and throughout the painting process I will paint over some of the initial line work. I can sometimes leave these lines visible through the layers of paint.
Colour and the mixing of colour is extremely important to each painting. I mix some paint in pots which have not been cleaned in over fifteen years, I never use paint straight from a tube. Even the whites tones I use contain red, yellow, or brown in its mix. Sometimes I will mix paints on the canvas itself. As the size of the canvas I use get larger, I still use brushes no bigger than one inch. Each paintings black line work is completed using black board [chalk board] paint, I enjoy its fluidity. The entire painting is finished with a light layer of artist gloss to bring out the colours further.
I am very interested in composition elements of a painting; using formal or informal composition to balance or off balance each painting. In a lot of my paintings I will off centre the figure.
The number of paintings to a series can be anywhere from three to twenty. When I am in the middle of a series, I will decide how far it will go and how many paintings will be made. A theme will run through each series without the paintings necessarily looking like they are in a series. For the series to be completed there needs to be a resolve of an idea or ideas.
Although the initial series of drawings may be large. I tend to keep looking at the series of drawings during painting each piece, and only choose what I think are the strongest images/ figurative forms to turn into a painting to add to the series.
Although my paintings are more commonly compared to Pop Art because of my use of a black ‘comic book’ line, it is in fact a style inspired by the drawings of Picasso and Matisse, whose use of strong line work firstly captured my attention in the late 1990’s. In the past I have created series’ of paintings dealing with Japanese advertisements of the 1920’s, Silver Screen film still’s and Fashion photography of the 1960’s.
Over the last twenty plus years my work has evolved with the use of contemporary images which I have used to forward ideas. I am very interested in portraying figures in a contemporary manner, my paintings have been compared to many different art genres, from Realist to Pop Art, Fashion Illustration and even Art Deco.
My recently completed series ’Linda’ and ‘Binary’ dealt with embracing and disrupting formal composition. For the first time in 2020 I chose to paint mixed white backgrounds in certain pieces. This work earned an online review in 2020 from Dab Art Co. in Los Angeles and an inclusion in their 2021-23 Artsy show. Also, in 2021 the work won a Distinguished Award from Canada’s ArtAscent magazine and a Finalist Award from Los Angeles’ Art Show International.
My current series ‘Sw16’ is named after the postcode where I am based in London, this current series is based on fifty drawings. I am also working on a 3.6 meter painting, the largest painting I have worked on. I completed 200 preliminary tracings and drawings for this painting, of which I am use 3 drawings for the paintings.
-My work in watercolours began with a simple interest in using different paint mediums. I wanted to investigate how watercolour paint pigments differ from acrylic, and how it would effect my figurative work.
The results in 2022 were the completion of fifty A3 size, delicate and softer paintings. In each painting the linework was left open on the paper with the image placed towards the center of the page. The linework on each image was laid down first. Then each panel of colour was painted on with a complete drying time given between the application of colours so that the colours would not bleed together.
This first series of watercolour paintings is titled ‘Sw16 watercolours’, working from fifty preliminary drawings and coinciding with the large scale Sw16 acrylic series on canvas. I used watercolours in a contemporary manner and using current print media advertising images as a starting point. I wanted to continue representing my interest in minimalism and abstraction with the use of colour and line work. I have continued to work in watercolours and progress the work in this medium.
I am also now experimenting with oil on paper and interested in other paint mediums such as gouache.
-I have an interest in contemporary artists such as Alex Katz, Sara Twomey, Richard Serra, Michael Heizer, Michael Armitage and Lisa Brice, I also have a strong interest in 19th and 20th century Scandinavian art. Visiting London exhibitions in galleries and museums which deal with contemporary art, past art movements and cultural history is very important to the production of my work. I find that it allows me to focus on the importance of progressing my paintings, and always to push the boundaries of my comfort zone.
Represented by Helwaser gallery on Madison Ave New York and London representation at Arte Globale in Covent Garden, Contemporary Collective at Somerset House and The Marylebone Gallery W1. A recipient of 2019’s International Art Market’s Gold List Award, Coyle has been working within art for over 20 years and been based in London UK since 2006. Her Pop figurative work focuses to push ideas and produce accomplished paintings of a Fine Art standard using process and execution of ideas.
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