Emily Mann is an artist specializing in printmaking, drawing, and mixed media. She received a BFA in Art & Design from the University of Michigan Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design in 2024.
Artist Statement:
Most of the time, I feel as though I do not exist in the ‘real world’. My native land is one of endless mental abstractions – an immaterial, impractical realm of rumination. Art does not come easily, in fact it sometimes feels incredibly unnatural. But that friction is what motivates me, and I try to intentionally cultivate it as a counterpoint to my inclination towards detachment, rigidity, and apathy. The overarching consideration of my work is how to move fluidly between the realm of ‘pure’ abstract ideas, like a mathematically perfect circle or square, and that of tangible sense-data. My artistic practice is the mediator between intellectual escapades and grounded presence; abstract analysis and concrete experience.
Analogue sketching, along with digital collage and photo manipulation, are where I typically begin, and the unfolding of this process is intuitive. It is serendipitous and fulfilling, yet frustrating in its non-logical nature. My instinct is to define, delineate, and categorize, but artmaking defies these techniques and frameworks. My work places ‘rational’ elements like grids, geometric shapes, and linear perspective in proximity to visual data and textures that are not so controlled, which are often derived from the natural world. The totalizing, ubiquitous imposition of order wrought by grids and perspective are part of their strange appeal – what does it mean to ‘geometrize’ in this way?
Through varied approaches to geometric abstraction, linear perspective, landscape, and figuration, my work prompts viewers to interrogate their fundamental mechanisms of sense-making, orientating, and narrative formation. The images are deliberately open-ended and non-didactic. My practice is a means of stepping beyond my native realm of propositions, plans, and theories, and testing the waters of instinct, intuition, emotion, and embodiment.