By Helen Peng
Speaking as an artist, Emilie was the person I personally admired the most. A well-rounded eleventh grade student, representative of the arts portfolio in Student Exec, and an extremely accomplished artist, who wouldn’t want to be like her? When I actually sat down with her, I found her to be these charming traits–and more.
Emilie believes that art is a way to show a person’s thinking without saying out loud. She says, “Do what you do best. Don’t let anybody tell you what’s good and what’s bad. Chances are, if you like it, someone else is going to love it too.” She adds after that: “You don’t need validation; art is not for anyone but yourself.”
This resonated with me the most. Throughout my years as an artist, I can confirm that it is difficult to not be affected by others’ judgements towards your art. However, Emilie is not at all affected by what other people say about her art. Her confidence towards what she creates is so admirable, and the only place I can think of where it comes from is her undeniable passion.
Speaking as an artist, Emilie was the person I personally admired the most. A well-rounded eleventh grade student, representative of the arts portfolio in Student Exec, and an extremely accomplished artist, who wouldn’t want to be like her? When I actually sat down with her, I found her to be these charming traits–and more.
Emilie believes that art is a way to show a person’s thinking without saying out loud. She says, “Do what you do best. Don’t let anybody tell you what’s good and what’s bad. Chances are, if you like it, someone else is going to love it too.” She adds after that: “You don’t need validation; art is not for anyone but yourself.”
This resonated with me the most. Throughout my years as an artist, I can confirm that it is difficult to not be affected by others’ judgements towards your art. However, Emilie is not at all affected by what other people say about her art. Her confidence towards what she creates is so admirable, and the only place I can think of where it comes from is her undeniable passion.
Growing up in a family of four, Emilie has always felt support from them towards the arts. In addition, she thanks teachers at Collingwood whom have encouraged her to develop her interests from kindergarten until now. In turn, Emilie supports other budding artists by volunteer teaching art to kids at the local community centre and at studios such as 4Cats. When she has free time, she also swims, dances, cooks and bakes.
Inspired by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, Emilie takes their semi-realistic style and adds personal touches and meanings. She loves working with every medium from acrylic to prisma-colour to graphite. Mainly, her art takes on the subject matters of still-lives, animals, and the occasional portrait.
It would be hard to believe that Emilie has had no formal technical art training and is completely self-taught. Packed with intricate details, vivid colours, and staggering realism, her art glows with wisdom, passion, and authenticity. For her mini-concentration which she completed this terms for the spring art show, she created “scientific journals” that showed information on lesser-known endangered animals such as peacocks and hummingbirds. In this piece, calligraphy is laced together with prisma-colour realism, and the piece’s beauty attracts viewers and raises awareness about the topic of endangered animals through art. Emilie merges her passion for art and science to create a new creative genre.
Her artworks were featured in the spring art show–look for Emilie’s art pieces on the walls near the art classrooms!
