News adn work from Emma L Pratt

Hi everyone,

I hope all is well and work is good with the gallery and plans for 2018 and 2019 are falling into place.

A lot has happed since I popped by the gallery in April last year. The last time I was in contact I was busy moving our family to the UK. Settling into schools, getting residency permits sorted, bank accounts open, dwellings, bikes, and family infrastructure as well as surviving our first northern winter are now behind us and my desperation for moving forward into new visual work is consuming me from the inside out, as you can imagine!

New Work

I've been making images for a while, contemplating our new life and surroundings and a direction is starting to take place for a body of new work. Part of this new work is to continue exploring what it is to be a citizen artist. I've proposed an artists in schools residency to a local school. I chose it because it's struggling with the effects of economics, with a lot of kids from families at risk as well as newly settling migrants (including us). I'm going to be making work that goes back to my landscape roots because, after so many years in a built up city like Seville, I find myself once again surrounded by the horizontal line of land and sky. What a relief!

Right next to us is a green belt with a lot of wildlife and attempts protect it. Part of my objective is to raise awareness of our stewardship of it and connection to land and place. I'll be doing my work one morning a week at the school where kids can come and talk and see the work progress. A few workshops will be happening as well, with some walks in the woods.

The details of the image featured here in this email are from the winter period.
"Draw on draw on..."
Multi media on 100 x 70cm 300gsm paper

Conference and Artist Residency

This week I'll be in Brighton where I've been invited to make work reacting to the content of the plenary speakers at an international language education conference. The conference is for language teachers, trainers, writers and publishers from all around the world and thousands will be there. It's a new situation for me where the work that feeds the family (teaching) and art making cross over. The aim is to raise awareness of the lack of focus on visual literacy in education worldwide.

Have a great week. As and when I have new work to show, I will send it through.

Emma L Pratt