Emily Chapman - Painting the bright side of life

Added: 2026-06-07

[00:00:13]I'm Emily Chapman.

[00:00:19]My work is all acrylic on canvas.

[00:00:23]I've always liked to sort of put emphasis on the the bright, jolly side of life.

[00:00:30]really just enhance what's already there more or less born into a family of artists. I had quite a lot of artists in my family. My mom used to paint a lot.

[00:00:44]So I grew up watching her paint.

[00:00:50]I was lucky enough to have an art art teacher in our village which I used to go to lessons with him all of my life really from very early age just sort of something in our family that we did naturally which was was really nice.

[00:01:10]My favorite place is Norwich. I mean it's just a fantastic city. There's so much history and so much has gone on there and I've got family used to use this river as their playground really.

[00:01:22]So as I've got a lot of attachment to that part of Norwich. So this is Paul's Ferry from the other side of the cathedral in Norwich. It's where they used to bring the supplies in to go through to the bishop's palace and it's just a really lovely quirky place.

[00:01:38]So there's a legend about the mermaid that came up to see the congregation singing in the in upper Sharingham church and she was drawn by the sound of the choir and she came up but she was sadly turned away as they were frightened of the mermaid. They were suspicious fishermen who don't like mermaids. So that was a painting I did to depict that.

[00:01:57]I'm very attached to the Norfolk coast because that's where I grew up. just love painting sort of coastal scenes Blakey and Wales and places like that with quirky little buildings. So I love architecture and just sort of seeing the environment that people are living in within Norfolk and the surrounding areas and just doing my take on that really.

[00:02:22]piece that I really enjoyed was one of I did of Thatford actually recently um that was a commission from um Corin at the Leaping Hair which is another little collective art space in Theford and she commissioned me to do a piece of um Thatford that was incorporating all of the the um highlights. They've got so many lovely historical um places in Theford. So I incorporated all of those the castle mound and the and the museum there and various others. They've got the Burl Museum and the Dad's Army Museum. All really amazing places in Theford and um yeah, I really enjoyed that and it kind of Theford gets a bit of a bad rap really and it really made me fall in love with the town there um and like notice all the beautiful historical things that go on within that lovely town. And yeah, so we've done lovely prints of that and that's been a really nice project. I love doing that one.

[00:03:21]So, I first started painting in this style um about 10 years ago and it first started with just I was painting a um a river scene and the river bent around a curve and I as I did the painting I thought I'll just exaggerate that curve a little bit and the boats were a little bit of a jaunty angle and and I actually sold that painting straight away and I thought oh this is nice. I like bends and curves and like to make the landscape look um inviting and that was kind of how it started really.

[00:04:02]So I always start with a red background that gives a lovely consistent background to layer on top. You get a nice saturated color and I have set colors that I tend to use all the time.

[00:04:18]And then I I tend to sketch straight onto the canvas with charcoal eventually get to the point where I want to start painting it in.

[00:04:28]For me, it's very meditative and you can really get lost in creating your own sort of um take on on what everyone's seeing, but I just I see it in a totally different way to everyone else, I think.

[00:04:42]And you can just turn that reality into your little little world really.

[00:04:52]And I can put what I want in it. And it's always sunny and the clouds are always bright and fluffy. And that's just my little world really.