Born in 1969, Emma's childhood was spent living between Sydney and south-western NSW as well as traveling around the world with her family. Emma studied at the National Art School where she received a diploma in 1994 and BFA in 2000. She also studied in Italy and has traveled extensively. She has been exhibiting regularly since 1995 and is represented in numerous private and corporate collections.

"Emma Walker is one of Australia's most convincing and original painters. Her work is as audacious as it is poetic; the one quality leavens the other, so that just as delicate reverie sets in, you're pulled up by a less immediately seductive note, an act of painterly boldness or some other form of tough, enlivening aesthetic decision… The emotions and moods of her works are conjured directly out of the processes of painting, unmediated by theory or jargon. And yet these are intelligent paintings - intelligent in their understanding of ambiguities, of space, and of colour."
Sebastian Smee 2006

"Emma uses abstract forms and many layers of paint to create an array of different textural effects. Her work explores the connections between landscape, memory and the subconscious. There is a certain drama in her work, she has an instinctive understanding of colour and there is an extreme play of light and dark in her abstracted landscapes which creates a dreamlike dimension."
Tim Olsen 2006

Artist Statement: The process is largely intuitive with decisions regarding composition, palette, texture and tonality being made rapidly, one move informing the next.I work using many layers of paint and I enjoy manipulating the medium in many ways to build up rich and varied surfaces. In this way the painting can reveal itself gradually and be visually interesting on different levels.
The technique of working in layers seems symbolically important. As if each layer somehow contributes in giving the painting a sense of history and a real physical presence. Like organs, bones, muscles, arteries, veins and skin all being essential and intrinsic parts of the human body. So too does each layer of paint need to be applied (even if some of them end up completely obscured by the next) to make up the finished piece. Sometimes I will photograph a work in its various stages and it is fascinating to see how many paintings there were beneath that final layer. Perhaps this is analogous to a life lived. All of those countless moments that contribute to the experience of being alive and of the person that we become through all of these experiences. Painting is my way of making some sense of the world and my particular incarnation in it.
Each work that I do, somehow informs the next and so all the paintings that I have ever produced, form a kind of family with an ever growing ancestry.

Emma Walker