Emily Shepard

My work is about connection and communication. I construct my art from surfaces on which I’ve painted, marked, or drawn. I then cut out or “harvest” elements that seem most alive, that have an emotional honesty to them. These are the raw materials from which I build collages and assemble paintings. I look for unexpected relationships and poetic through lines. The marks and elements are players, in dialogue with one another.

I often use found paper from accounting ledgers, antique encyclopedias, flash cards, or index cards. I’m drawn to these sources for the authority or structure they imply, which I push against. My work offers instead an internal way to understand what is known, and to reflect on being present and embodied.

Text and letterforms interest me. My goal is to abstract them, to have their form disintegrate into merely a shape, divorced from it’s prior life. Elements of communication are reduced to rubble, and gestural marks stand in for words, existing below the surface of complete comprehension, like hearing a muttered phrase but unable to decipher its meaning, or misinterpreting the intent.