Emily Reed lives in Auburn, Michigan, a mile-long town with two stoplights. She paints from her home, primarily from the island in the kitchen as her family’s life swirls around her. These are quaint aspects of her work, and yet her paintings are imbued with large ideas about identity, death and living with a heavy heart in the most literal way possible. This union of quaint and profound suits Reed well.
Heavy Hearted, mixed media on canvas, 24 x 18 in.“Some of my pieces can be very emotionally driven, but really all my art is. I’m very, very driven by emotion and circumstances in my life. These works sum up the last five years of my life, including an adoption in our family and the passing of my dad. And yet, my paintings can also be very playful in nature. It’s how I perceive these events and the world. My spin on it is these things don’t have to feel quite so personal because somebody can look at them and feel different things, even enjoyment,” Reed says. “I don’t want people to see the work and think, ‘Oh, that’s about her dad’s death.’ But when I see it, that’s what I feel. Artwork can mean whatever you want it to mean.”
Reed points to her painting Attendee,which shows a young woman in an oversized sweater and party hat, a balloon dog pinned to her ear. “She looks a little discontented. It’s how I felt after my dad died. I felt sorta like, ‘I’m here. I’m doing it,’ but I don’t necessarily want to be at the party,” she says. “That can be a universal feeling, and not just related to death. Because, when you look at it, it is just a girl in a party hat.”
Admit One, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in.
The artist will be bringing Attendee and seven other works to a new show, Double Exposure, at RJD Gallery in Romeo, Michigan, on September 1. It’s the artist’s first show at the gallery. “Double Exposure explores the face we present to the world and the one that dwells beneath the surface—revealing how, at times, those realities blur and collide,” says Joi Jackson Perle, RJD’s gallery director. “When the inner world is unlocked, it is filled with fantasy and folklore, offering unexpected ways of seeing the everyday and reminding us that imagination is never far from the surface.”
Let Your Hare Down, mixed media on canvas, 30 x 24 in.
Several works in the show feature large organs, including Heavy Hearted, which features a figure wearing a literal heart on her sleeve and a face that looks like an optical illusion, and Internal Warfare, showing a girl with balloons shaped like a realistic heart and brain. “Organs make us up, don’t they? I think it’s interesting that we don’t really see them, but they’re there and you feel them working,” she says. “My mom asked me why I do that, because it does feel a bit gruesome. I own a restaurant and some of my work has hung in the restaurant, and she tells me that people don’t want to eat around paintings like this. I feel they are beautiful. If we know what’s inside of us, then we all have that connection to each other. Showing the organs on the outside also adds a feeling of being exposed, sometimes in an excruciating way.”
Invasive Species, mixed media on canvas, 30 x 24 in.
Attendee, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 in.
The artist adds that her work can have very child-like qualities. “We’re all still the childhood versions of ourselves, but within an adult’s body. Those struggles and feelings that you had as a child are still there,” she adds.
Some of these qualities pop up in Invasive Species, which shows a child with a polygon-style rabbit head, as if from an early 2000s video game. The child is standing in front of a real rabbit as they both look at each other, recognizing the different versions but being unable to totally identify with the oddity before them. The painting plays into Reed’s fascination with childhood, but also themes of identity and even heritage.
Asked if her work is allegorical, she says it’s as good as a description as any other. “I’m basically that person who is attempting to fit into this natural environment, but obviously it doesn’t. And I’m trying to use art, and even allegory, to make sense of that,” she says.
Internal Warfare, mixed media on canvas, 20 x 16 in.
When it comes to her human subjects, Reed takes great pleasure in creating unique and stylized human figures, from the oversized eyes and rosy cheeks to the elongated faces and awkward poses. She says she’s been drawn to exaggerated figures for a long time and continues to paint that way because it makes the paintings more dynamic and interesting. She’s asked frequently if she paints herself, or how she sees herself, and sometimes the paintings are self-portraits, though not always. “I want people to see beautiful people, but not necessarily a specific person. It’s not about the individual, but about the larger idea within the painting,” she adds. “The painting is the idea.”
Reed’s solo show at RJD Gallery continues through October 5. —
Pass with Care, oil on canvas, 18 x 14 in.
RJD Gallery 227 N. Main Street • Romeo, MI 48065 (586) 281-3613 • www.rjdgallery.com
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