A painter who grew up in Europe falls in love with the Arizona desert

Painter Emma Florance grew up in England and Switzerland — very different parts of the world from Phoenix. So now, living in Arizona for the first time, she’s got mixed feelings about this desert city.

And that’s what she tackles in her first solo art exhibition at the Shemer Art Center. It’s called “Desert Fairytale.”

Florance came to KJZZ's studios to talk about her show, and she said she moved to Phoenix after graduating college at the Rhode Island Institute of Design.

Full conversation

EMMA FLORANCE: And I felt like I was working so hard to graduate, and I finally did, and then I got here and I like was wiped out.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

EMMA FLORANCE: And I think it took me like six months to really want to paint again. I was like trying to do it, but I wasn’t really enjoying it. And my mom kept being like, “Just paint a cactus. Everyone wants to see like a cactus painting.” I was like, “Mom, no, like I can’t. I can’t just like suddenly start painting like desert stuff and just like call it that.”

Because you’re here. That’s not what you painted before, I’m guessing?

EMMA FLORANCE: No, not because I don’t like it, because I do like it. I mean, clearly I like it. But, um, yeah, I don’t know, it just it didn’t really feel organic because I hadn’t lived here before. But, of course, she was right. Because, I don’t know, my mom is always right.

And I did, I started painting. I did like a really big painting of a saguaro with a girl inside of it, and it just, I don’t know, something about it was really resonating with me because I was thinking about how it was living here and like it felt really, really different to me because it is really different to anywhere else that I’ve ever lived.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, it’s a very unique place.

EMMA FLORANCE: It's so weird.

And you grew up, we should say, out of the country—Switzerland, England, right? So, you’ve been kind of all over the world and in very different parts of the U.S., but I know you’ve always had family here. So, you’ve you’ve spent time in the desert, but never really lived here.

Emma Florance

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EMMA FLORANCE: Yeah, I spent a lot of time like during summer vacations here, which, I think made it feel really special to me because it was like always I was seeing like my grandma and my grandpa and like, you know, going to the pool and hanging out and not like doing schoolwork.

So, to me, Phoenix was always just fun, and like a little bit magical because I was a kid and it was so different and like all the plants are kind of weird and they, it looks like you’re under the ocean, but it’s dry.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s a good way to put it. Let me describe that that saguaro painting you’re talking about, because I’m looking at it now and it is, like it’s a large saguaro that goes off the frame, right, and then there’s like a girl peeking out of a hole in it, and you see one of her hands wrapped around one of the arms, and you see her feet actually at the bottom by the roots. And behind her is like the grid of like the Phoenix city lights.

Talk a little bit about the kind of contrast that you’re drawing throughout this series of paintings, which is sort of about not just the city, but the the natural environment colliding with it.

EMMA FLORANCE: Yeah, I think it’s so stark here, the contrast in comparison to anywhere else that I’ve spent time, because you’re like looking at a mountain and then you turn the other direction and it’s just like this huge city. And I never realized growing up how big Phoenix is, and like how vast and wide it is and how much concrete it is, and I think when I first moved here, I was like, oh my gosh, like it’s so like dusty and gray and like, you have to drive a car to get everywhere, and I really was sort of like fighting that. Because I didn’t like it. I was like, oh my gosh, this place.

LAUREN GILGER: I think I had the same reaction when I moved here as a middle schooler.

EMMA FLORANCE: Yeah, like it’s, it’s really overwhelming, and there’s sort of this feeling that there’s no nature, but then, as I’m living here and I’m like walking around when the weather is nice, like there’s a lot of nature. There’s a lot of plant life and creatures that live even in the city, and I was so surprised by it and just like it’s so magical to see like all of a sudden a huge cactus and think that like how much water it holds and it’s just like growing next to the sidewalk or next to the highway or something.

LAUREN GILGER: Yes.

EMMA FLORANCE: Especially the saguaro, that they’re so regal, and they have to be really old to get that big, and I just think it’s incredible that they’re just there. Like it’s just there.

LAUREN GILGER: Amazing the the perspective an outsider can give us on our own place, yeah.

EMMA FLORANCE: I know, like it’s so strange, the contrast.

LAUREN GILGER: I mean, you really hit on that here, and you you use your own likeness in this, right? Like, the little girl or the the woman in these portraits is often you — like these are self-portraits, in a way.

EMMA FLORANCE: In a way, I didn’t mean for them to be initially, but it was sort of like lack of another subject, like another person to paint. Like, I didn’t want to paint a portrait of someone else because I didn’t want the story to be about like a specific person, but rather an experience or like she’s sort of like a conduit for like anyone. Like, if you can see the figure in the painting, like you can sort of imagine that you’re her or like you’re watching her experience something, but they all do sort of look like me.

Because I think — I think you’re the easiest person to paint is yourself, because you know your face really well.

LAUREN GILGER: That's really interesting.

EMMA FLORANCE: At least personally, like all the portrait practice I did, not all of it, but a lot of it was like in a mirror, because it’s just you’re the only person that’s always available, always there.

LAUREN GILGER: Always there. I would have thought it would be almost harder to paint yourself in a way, because it’s you. Like, do we have any objectivity when it comes to yourself?

EMMA FLORANCE: I think you have to, right?

LAUREN GILGER: Maybe as a painter you do, yeah.

EMMA FLORANCE: Like, really, I think it’s easier, because when you’re painting someone else, you want it to like look good.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s true.

EMMA FLORANCE: Because you want to show them and be like, “Here, like I did this of you,” and not have them be offended. But if I’m painting myself, like I can’t really offend myself.

Emma Florance

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LAUREN GILGER: Fair enough.

So you’re in these pieces, a lot of them, or someone who looks like you. I want to talk about the process of this, because these are oil paintings. They’re often very realistic, but they all have this kind of mystical, magical kind of energy about them.

And since this is radio, I’ll try to describe them. They’re all, most of them at least, pretty dark, like almost twilight kind of feeling to these, and then lots of them have like these bright lights, whether it’s the city lights or in one of them you have like the cactus flowers like lit up. And they look glowing, like it it doesn’t look like a painting in that way. How do you do this?

EMMA FLORANCE: Lot of layering. Yeah, I would say so. I work really slowly, so I’ll start with a drawing on paper, and then I’ll do a drawing on the canvas, and then I’ll do multiple underpaintings, multiple layers.

LAUREN GILGER: Those are literally just paintings under the actual painting.

EMMA FLORANCE: Yeah, correct, yeah. It’s just like, like thin layers underneath, and then like with every layer it gets a little bit thicker, the paint gets thicker, the colors get more opaque. It’s really slow.

LAUREN GILGER: How long does it take you? Like, if you start that that saguaro painting, how long did it take you to finish it?

EMMA FLORANCE: That painting took me about a year, but I wasn’t working on it like constantly every day. I would say that was like a few hours every day or a few hours every other day.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Do you think, as you’re looking at that interplay between the urban landscape and the kind of natural environment, those, you know, cactuses in the middle of the desert by a sidewalk on the street, right, or on the highway, do you think that the the urban landscape this city is, is stifling out that kind of natural landscape, or do you think there’s something really cool and interesting about them both being there and together?

FLORANCE: I feel both ways. When I first moved here, I — and I think you can tell in my paintings because a couple of like or like the saguaro painting, for example, it’s kind of bleak. Like, it’s very gray, and I was really concerned about like pollution and light pollution, and just like all the gas fumes and the dust and everything, which I’m still concerned about because I think, you know, those are bad things.

But the longer I stay here, the more I realize that they’re kind of coexisting. Well, a good example would be Camelback Mountain. I think it’s a shame that the roads are so close to it and that houses were ever allowed to be built on it, because it’s beautiful nature, and I think it should have been protected.

However, I’m grateful that I get to drive so close to it, because it’s so cool to see it, and I there’s I think it’s 44th Street, where you’re driving past it and you’re just so close to the rocks.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

EMMA FLORANCE: And it’s so beautiful to see it like that.

LAUREN GILGER: It’s right there in the middle of everything, yeah.

EMMA FLORANCE: Yeah, like it’s so audacious that the city was built like up onto it.

LAUREN GILGER: Audacious is a good word for it.

All right, we’ll leave it there. Emma Florance, an artist and painter. Her current solo exhibition, her first in fact, is called “Desert Fairy Tale.” It’s available now until July 9 at the Shemer Art Center. Emma, thank you very much for coming in, I appreciate it very much.

FLORANCE: Thank you.