Biography

Emma Fitzpatrick is an Irish contemporary painter and printmaker based in Dublin. Her work explores landscape, time, and human interaction with place through monotype and etching.

She has exhibited widely across the UK, including national open exhibitions, and was awarded an Arts Council England grant to support the development of her practice. She has undertaken residencies including Cill Rialaig Arts Centre and Brisons Veor, which have influenced her approach to landscape and mark-making.

Her work is informed by the remote natural landscapes of Ireland’s West Coast. Through printmaking processes such as monotype, drypoint and etching, she creates images that balance deliberate line with expressive, gestural mark-making.

Alongside her exhibition practice, she has completed commissioned projects for organisations including Canal & River Trust, Leicester City Council, and a boutique hotel in Leicester. Her work is held in private collections in the UK and Ireland.

Selected exhibitions include Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, Bankside Gallery, the Royal Society of British Artists, Royal West of England Academy, Society of Women Artists, Ty Pawb, Tarpey Gallery, Cank Street Gallery, and the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin.

Artist Statement

My landscape work is shaped by the vast, remote terrains of Ireland’s West Coast. I draw on its dramatic weather fronts, primordial character, and the scattered traces of past human presence. Through printmaking, I explore the tension between human ingenuity for survival and the enduring forces of nature over time.

Sketching outdoors within these elemental landscapes allows me to experience their vastness directly, heightening an awareness of human scale against geological time. I absorb the atmosphere of place and carry that sensory experience into the studio, where it informs prints that balance control with expressive gesture. The shifting weather systems I depict become metaphors for environmental and human turbulence.

Working primarily in monotype, drypoint and etching, I use deliberate line alongside fluid mark-making to reflect the fragile balance between structure and unpredictability. Drawing and painting from observation form an essential part of my process, allowing me to record atmosphere, movement and spatial memory that later inform the distilled visual language of the prints.