Emma Steinkraus
Region: South
I combine paintings with wallpapers to distill complex research into a cohesive visual space, shifting the stories we tell about women, art history, and the natural world. My work is densely detailed and slightly surreal, hybridizing the bright colors and 1990s pop aesthetic of Lisa Frank with wide-ranging art historical references. My current project, Impossible Garden, explores the lives of historical women artist-naturalists through paintings and wallpaper constructed out of their illustrations. Each painting combines detailed portraiture with photo transfers that form patterns on the women’s clothing. The transfers grapple with the complexity of the individual lives of historical women artists, inventorying the nuanced ways they abetted and resisted patriarchal constraints, environmental exploitation, and colonialism.