Alia

Emma Taylor is an oil painter and art history student, engaging with the human condition, sensuality, gender, mortality, and intimacy. Emma managed and curated the March 2024 Women’s History Month exhibition in Farnborough. She is currently shortlisted for the 2026 Royal Female School of Art curatorial mentorship in collaboration with the White Box Gallery in London. Emma’s paintings are characterized by soft, atmospheric textures and a restrained, muted palette that reflects upon 19th century classical traditions. Figures often appear partially obscured, emerging from or receding into hazy backgrounds or exposed underpainting.

I am an artist living on the edge of The New Forest. I use folklore, folksong, old customs, games and rituals to explore contemporary issues particularly social and economic disparity. Country living can be a strange mix of bounty and hopelessness but when people have access to their own strong and sinuous roots, their own history and stories they have anchorage and hope. I seek the stories that connect us and as an artist I’m thinking of different ways of pinning them up on the metaphorical village hall notice board for all to see. Alongside my own practice I run drawing workshops as The Village Hall Draw and community workshops around the New Forest working with Culture in Common and Hampshire Cultural Heritage amongst others.

I am a theatre-maker and director working across Hampshire and the UK. My background is in new writing and site-responsive performance; I ran High Hearted Theatre with writer Marcelo Dos Santos, making productions for Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, Greenwich + Docklands International Festival, Southwark Playhouse, Brighton Fringe, Omnibus London and more. I currently work mostly in participatory practice and co-creation, creating work in collaboration with professional creatives and communities. I am also an artist-researcher with a particular interest in place, space and identity, and how theatre for social change.