photo credit: Christopher Wormald

Calla Lilies, 2023

Paige Emery

71" x 47"

Hand-made oil paint from plants on canvas, hand-carved pine wood, thread stitching, rope

Exhibiting at Make Room Gallery , July 28th - September 9th, 2023

Calla Lilies are a plant of the moon, of water, and of death and rebirth. Through cultivating a relationship with Calla Lillies since my early childhood, I continue to explore the lessons they can teach us about finding new life from death, and the ways we can tune into the cycles of life like the cycles of the moon, constantly folding into themselves anew. Amidst the constant destruction of the planet, this motion can be a movement of hope through remembrance of Earthly wisdoms. 

My paintings are an alchemical entanglement of herbalism, painting, and healing rituals. As a way of connecting to plants and being as ecologically conscious as possible with materials, I make my own paint with medicinal plant infusions, hand-mixing the paint in a tedious labor of love. I sing to the concocted paint as I am making it, just as I sing to the plants in my garden every morning. When I go into my studio it is always with ritual: I cleanse myself of any negative energy before entering the space, I begin with a tea ceremony with tea made from the plants I am working with, I sit at my altar and burn dried plants while giving gratitude to the Earth, and I sing for the plants. The wooden frame is hand-carved stroke by stroke onto Pine, a tree that has been on earth for hundred of millions of years.

This act of ritual with plants has been a part of exploring in what ways can we carry plants when our gardens are being destroyed and our planet is being destroyed, in what ways can we remember love in times of grieving, in what ways new life can come from death. 

Fountain of Nectar I and Fountain of Nectar II, 2023

20” x 24”

Handmade oil paint from plants on canvas, hand-carved wood, sinamay

Exhibiting at Ochi Gallery

Photo credit: Deen Babakhyi

A ritual, an entity of a sacred garden. A garden that will always be there even as the world is ending. One that holds all of the memories of love and connection and medicine, where there are ways for these memories to be more than memories, but talismans, for dreaming reality into being.

Memory Garden, 2023

handmade oil paint from plants on canvas

65” x 90”