Emma-Leone Palmer

Exuding vibrancy and sensuality, Emma-Leone Palmer's brand new ÉKSTASIS collection is unabashed and unapologetic, exploring our sense of self and the way we express who we really are through movement and light.

Through her fearless paintings, Emma-Leone Palmer explores the synergy of art, music and light; with rhythm pulsing through her veins, she has pushed the possibilities of oil paint to combine the canonical painting modes of the Renaissance with the hyper-neon colours of the 21st century. Contemporary yet classical, Emma’s figurative works draw upon the freedom of sound.

To create her hypnotic pieces, Emma fixes pliable lighting strips and neon wires to her subjects and takes hundreds of reference photographs before starting to paint. Using colours similar to infrared photography, the Surrey-based artist captures the futuristic otherness of the body by exploring each subject’s intimate connection with energy.

She is moved by a compulsive urge to create and the challenge of capturing an emotion. For Emma, painting is as innate as breathing. She loves the feeling of oil paint between her fingers and the way the colours move and blend.

Emma says: “My muses are currently all women…faces or personalities I find intriguing. I paint what I connect with, or what has me questioning…an allure, the way the light dances and caresses certain areas. I paint faces, although I like to say I paint expressions…not just what is on the aesthetic surface, but what is underneath. It’s the internal dialogue versus the external portrayal. The painting is only done when it starts talking back to me, like it has become more than me.”

Celestial, otherworldly and intensely intimate, the latest release from Emma-Leone Palmer’s Afterglow collection sees her ethereal female figures return for her first-ever limited edition prints. 

Emma-Leone Palmer invites us to explore a supernatural negative space to navigate the neural pathways of our own minds.

Spiralling across each of the large-scale original oil paintings is a seemingly chaotic entanglement of neon wires. Allegorising not only the complexity of our thoughts but the digital information we receive and process on a daily basis, these bursts of light illuminate the female subjects whilst deepening the darkness they inhabit.