Blue Roots 2
2020
New Orleans, Louisiana
Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.
Emma Fick was born in Covington, LA, in 1991. After completing her degree in English Literature and Art History in 2013, she taught English in Serbia on a Fulbright scholarship and began to chronicle its culture in a series of watercolor illustrations called “Snippets.” After publishing her first book of illustrations, Snippets of Serbia, in 2015, she returned to New Orleans and began working on Snippets of New Orleans, which was published in 2017. In New Orleans, she shifted to fine art, with a conceptual focus on hybrids: merging Louisiana-specific symbols and ancient Byzantine frescoes; creating half-human half-bird mythological creatures; combining plant species in ways not found in nature. Her current work, all watercolor and ink on paper, explores cultural, biological, and floral hybrids and the endless permutations they allow. Her third book, Border Crossings: A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway, will be published by HarperCollins Design in 2022.
Joan Mitchell Center Residency, 2021
I work with watercolor and ink on paper, and sometimes cut up my work to collage it. I look to art history, travel, and literature for inspiration, and am interested in talismans and how different cultures denote an object as holy: by elevating it, or encasing it, or embellishing it with specific shapes or colors. Right now, I am most inspired by Persian illuminated manuscripts and Byzantine iconography.”