Emma Phillips
Selected
Commissioned
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This time last year (how to make a picture)
ReadingRoom
November 9 - December 7 2024

This time last year
Erik Jensen

Emma says she drew the wind. It happened very quickly, in a single weekend.

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In Emma’s phone there is a painting by Milton Avery. The mountains are all white and their peaks are bent like the wings of a seagull in a drawing.

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Sometimes a ballet flat can look like a dead swallow. Emma was thinking of buying a pair. The ballet flat she painted was from Kmart but it wasn’t the one she wanted.

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Louise Glück said we look at the world once, in childhood. She said the rest is memory. You don’t say her name the way it’s written. The difference is the sound of rain.

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Nothing on a boat is square, especially not the upholstery.

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Sometimes the cat gets paint on her. She has a blue paw and a little streak along her grey flank.

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There is nothing fast about a photograph, except taking it. The rest of the process takes forever.

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The first picture is eight pictures, pinned together like a hopscotch court. Olivia found it in a drawer. The path back to childhood is taken on one leg.

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Emma paints on a drop sheet in a room with a plaid sofa. Each time the sheet gets dirty, she folds it over. The more she paints the less space there is to paint.

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Mud Island isn’t made of mud. It’s made of sand.

A dress doesn’t have to be worn to look as if it’s dancing, but it helps.

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Milton Avery didn’t talk much. “Why talk,” he said, “when you can paint?”

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Occasionally Emma looks at a picture and all she can see is complaining.

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Walker Evans said a photograph should never be made of motherhood or anywhere near the beach. The first time Emma heard this was in an argument.

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It’s hot now. There is no breeze and the air has the quality of a dog’s breath.

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Emma has seen the same dentist her entire life. Driving home from her last appointment, she took a picture of a bent and naked tree standing in a roundabout.

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Emma’s first memory is not an image; it is the sound of water lapping.

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When Emma makes a portrait she looks for the small details. She looks for the hands and feet.

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Today it is raining and it will rain all day, the slow, insistent rain that wets the light and sits like blisters on the window.

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Emma paints on jibs and spinnakers. She paints the wind on broken sails. The scraps that are too big, she cuts up.

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When she started making portraits, it was to get used to other people. Without knowing why, she drove back home.

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Emma seems happy when she tells me James Agee stayed with the sharecroppers. Walker Evans slept in a hotel.

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Writing a poem and taking a photograph are not so different. They are never quite what is in front of you.

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