Bent Nails, 2022
Derived from collected images, memory and the imagination, Emily Ferretti’s paintings captivate in their playful simplicity. Joyful, humorous and honest paintings, they manifest a sensibility which one might describe as ‘quiet camp’.
Rendered in a fresh, bright palette, in brushstrokes equally clear and confident, they are considered and iterative rather than hasty and aggressive. They meditate on a defined set of subjects and scenes; they move through spaces imagined, yet ones that are never far from the artist’s everyday: trees and parkways, domestic settings, the workshop and studio. Brushstrokes flow across the paintings’ surfaces, never seeming abrupt and certainly not angry, even when they so show something altogether spikey, and quite possibly violent (i.e. the spinning blade of a circular saw). And such marks have an almost onomatopoeic quality to them—representing not only the ‘thing’ but also their movement, how they occupy space and time, and quite possibly their aura, their energy.
Attuned to contemporary practice, Ferretti’s paintings engage with a history of picture making across genre and tradition. Influences of folk art and early modernist painting being clear to see (unashamedly so). Her work extends these artistic traditions, and through doing so makes her own indelible mark.
Emily Ferretti (Born 1982, Naarm/Melbourne) currently lives and works in Naarm. Over the past fifteen years she has undertaken a dedicated full-time studio practice. During this time her work has been widely exhibited, in exhibitions across Australia, North America and Europe. She has undertaken studio residences including Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, Cite de Arts International, Paris, and Green Street, New York. Her work is held in numerous public collections across Australia, and numeous private collections internationally.