ABOUT
Jamie Emerick is a San Francisco-based painter whose visceral, expressive work centers on the human figure, especially the portrait, as a site of emotional and psychological exploration. In an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and disembodied interaction, Emerick views her work as a form of embodied resistance, an investment in what cannot be optimized: the messy, ambiguous experience of being human.
Emerick approaches painting as a dynamic, intuitive process. She begins with a loose impulse—a feeling, a color, a photo—and moves quickly across multiple canvases, using rags as often as brushes. Through layering, obscuring, and reworking, she resists resolution, allowing haunted, spectral figures to emerge and dissolve within transparent washes and bold strokes, evoking moments that are unstable, unconscious, and in flux. Emerick’s paintings evoke the porous boundaries of the self: skin, psyche, and soul. Her figures are transformed—abstracted, obscured, and reconfigured into vessels for something deeper. Themes of memory, sorrow, transformation, and connection move through the work.
Emerick received her BA from St. Olaf College. She continued her study with Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky in Florence, Italy, South Africa and the United States. She graduated with an MFA from California College of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Bay Area and is held in private collections.
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