We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Emily Thornton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Emily below.
Hi Emily, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
My resilience is sprung from a frustration with my (former) inability to believe in my own capabilities.
Having worked many years as an art director with inhouse advertising, a field that is mainly dominated by gen Z hipsters, it became painfully clear to me that most of my (male) colleagues had confidence in their own skills I lacked.
To have the mindset of a genius is apparently not as rare as my middle aged self thought it was? I saw people come up with a brilliant (or not so brilliant) idea, stick with it like a mad scientist and run with it even though many people told them not to. The persistence, the lack of listening to the nay sayers and the willingness to bow down to curiosity seemed to work for them, so I thought; then maybe for me to?
It has taken me many hours of powerful mindset training and I still doubt my self at times of course, and I’m nowhere close to calling myself brilliant (or a genius, ha!) but today I firmly believe in my qualities. And then to outsource the things I can’t manage!
I’m very proud of being brave enough to start my own art business, especially at my age! I have always been creating art, and always will, but to decide that this is what’s going to bring me an income too, is a new path I’m excited to explore.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I have always been interested in painting people, in creating fictive personalities. Everything I see influences me in one way or another! But my greatest source of inspiration is just watching people – their facial expressions, their body language, their gait. Before the kids arrived, I could sit at a café or park bench for hours just observing the people around me (people-watching behind dark glasses is a secret speciality of mine).
I create expressive, bold portraits on canvas (or as wall hung tufts) portraying eclectic day-dreamers and the beautifully complex. I have always been drawn to people’s quirks and flaws. I find that the most beautiful traits are found beneath the hidden layers. I add layers of thick paint on the canvas to enhance each emerging portrait’s personality. And In my mind, simultaneously, I peel off the layers of the portraité to get to their very essence. It’s a game of shielding and flaunting.
By the end of the process I know my people intimately and have created an entire universe around them. I paint specific people with universal feelings. I’m fascinated by the relatability of it all.
I don’t really care if people ‘like’ my art. It might sound pretentious or snobby, but what’s important to me is that it conveys some sort of emotion in the viewer. I want them to stop at it, look at it, look again…and then again. Art is there for many reasons – to provoke, to inspire, to decorate. My hope is that my art it is something that draws you in, for whatever reason, and leaves you with a feeling of having been seen.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I have a couple of golden rules I’ve found tremediously helpful throughout my art career:
– I master the mindset of being content with less than perfect.
Yup. Against all American cheerleading beliefs I settle for imperfect. If you’re trying to get everything in mint condition before you launch your idea to the world, it will never see the day of light. Get it done, accept that it’s not exactly how you imagined it, and then allow yourself to be proud of the outcome anyway. You can (and will if you run a business) tweak all the details further down the line. Also I find that the real beauty hides within the flaws, the quirks and the unexpected oddities.
– I always keep coffee and good music at arms reach
I figure caffeine and a good tune helps in most situations, so I guess my most reliable tip is to not enter your studio or workspace without neither.
-I always stay curious
It is curiosity which drives my work forward. I’m trying to stay positive to not knowing exactly where my work will take me and just trusting the beleif that it will work. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote ( in her fantastic book about creativity, “Big Magic”) that you should think of your art process as being on a scavenger’s hunt. One clue leads to an other, and if you’re lucky it’ll lead you to a new exciting unexplored path. So I always try to keep my eyes open and not judge the result to harshly.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m constantly on the look out for new parnterships! As I extended my business to include large scale tufts quite recently I’d love to collaborate with a carpet company. Imagine unlimited editions of face carpets! Or getting my people printed on textile… My experience is that when makers from different business areas get creative together the result most often reaches new and unexpected heights.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thorntonartwork.com
- Instagram: @thorntonartwork.ab
- Facebook: Thornton Artwork AB
Image Credits
All images is the artist’s own. ©Thorntonartwork AB
