BIO

Jamie Emerick was born in Boulder, Colorado. She received her BA from St. Olaf College during which time she met Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky in Florence, Italy. She has continued to study with them for the past 15 years in Italy, South Africa and the United States. Jamie graduated with an MFA from California College of the Arts and continues to live and work in San Francisco, California.

Emerick’s work is about the tension of ambiguity, fragmentation and dualism in the internal psychological self and its reflection in society. Restraint with unbearable emotional honesty, abjection and redemption suffer an uneasy truce in the fluid, gestural and layered paint applications. Tight and opaque brushstrokes juxtaposed with transparent spills and bleeding edges underscores a constant battle between control and uncertainty; and the porous nature of the skin. These figures in her work embody a power struggle between identity, fear of loss, the certainty of change, and the persistence of the human culminating in an uncomfortable state of grace.

CURRICULUM VITAE

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND PERFORMANCES

2017 Costumes for Dawson Dance performances “Gestures and Angles” and “Les Vérités” at YBCA, San Francisco

2015 “Continuum” Solo Show at Alter Space Gallery, San Francisco, California

2014 "GATES of ILL" Main Stage, Priceless Festival, Belden California 

2014 "Cradle Project", Alter Space, San Francisco, California

2014 “Surveillance Everyday”, Studio 110 Projects, Sausalito, California

2013 MFA Thesis Exhibition, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California

2013 Selected Paintings exhibited at Cowboys and Angels, San Francisco, California

2013 Artists Drawing Club Procession, performance with Ranu Mukherjee, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, California

2012 “John Baldassari: Class Assignments”, Wattis Institute, San Francisco, California

2011 Solo Show, SPQR, Colorado Springs, Colorado

2011 “Mountain Standard, Time and Place”, MODBO & SPQR, Colorado Springs, Colorado

2010 T+P Gallery, Santa Fe Drive, Denver, Colorado

2009 “Hiding/Revealing, Antler Skirt” Performance, Boulder, Colorado

2008 “Mapping Reason”, VIVA, Sebastopol, California

2008 “American rEvolution”, Junto Gallery, Brooklyn, New York

2007 Rosenclaire Workshop, a Domestic Departures collaboration, Cal State Fullerton Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, California

2006 “ArtEdu”, VIVA, Sebastopol, California

2004 Greatmore Art Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, Group Show

2004 Metaphor Gallery, Aspen, Colorado

2004 Private Exhibition and Fundraiser for Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights, Aspen, Colorado

2003 473 and 450 Broadway Gallery, New York, “Translatability” Group Show

2003 Berlinerkunstprojekt, Berlin, Germany, Group Show

2002 Small Art Works Gallery, Florence, Italy

2002 Dittman Center Gallery, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota