Fine Art Graduate
Emily Pumfrett’s work focuses on themes of Ugliness in art and distortion within portrait painting. Pumfrett uses gloss paint as her medium to help her explore the ways in which different colours can interact and bleed into one another due to its fluidity. This helps to further distort the painted image and exaggerate the portrait’s features to create this ‘grotesque’ and unnatural appearance. By using gloss paint a smooth surface is created that makes the image appear as though the paint is still wet. Pumfrett’s paintings are made by dripping and pouring paint onto the surface whilst it is laid horizontal. When raised vertically the paint shifts creating textural creases and wrinkles which in turn creates the urge to feel and touch the paint in intrigue. Scale is an important element in her painting as the larger the surface is, the more intimidating the overall effect of the ugly face vacantly staring at the viewer becomes.