A Force of Nature: an interview with artist Emily Fox King
A Force of Nature by Emily Fox King
Segullah: Welcome, Emily! I love your exuberant paintings, and I’m thrilled to find out about you – the creator of these impressive works. Fill us in a little on your background and what fuels your creative zeal.
Emily: I’ve always made work about my life. In my early 20’s I painted overweight and fat ballerinas, as a metaphor for myself (an ex-ballerina who always felt out of place, loved ballet, but was born into the wrong body type). Ballet functioned as a metaphor for a rigid and set way of being, similar to the options that are presented in Mormon culture for women. You can marry and have children, or marry and have children, so it seems. (I know there are more options personally, but institutionally, this is what is presented.)
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Floral 51 by Emily Fox King
Later, in grad school at BYU I explored notions of femininity and how the feminine gender is constructed, as well as how Mormon culture references outdated ideas of womanhood. I was incredibly frustrated in my quest to find a mate. I had a lot of boyfriends, but they didn’t really want to marry me. I thought, here I am, incredibly talented (ha!) and it seems all the boys are looking for MORE. What more can they want? I cook, sew, love being around children, play the guitar, piano, make art videos, draw, paint, ride horses, speak Spanish, volunteer weekly at the MTC, love Jesus, and nobody is seriously interested in me.
My final MFA show at BYU was a life size house model (kind of like those fake kitchens and bedrooms at IKEA) filled with drawings of women from the 1950’s, art videos where I starred as an “Esther Williams-esque” woman swimming in a pool of donuts, myself in a beauty pageant, myself as a ballerina dancing on a stage, as well as paintings of dolls, and ceramics of doll heads, surrounded by vintage ephemera, furniture, and wallpaper.
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Emily with her family
I met my husband 2 years after grad school. He was a baptized member of the church, but hadn’t attended since childhood. He pursued me with refreshing interest and persistence, so I married him. I was disappointed that it wasn’t a temple marriage, and felt very lost at the time. I wondered if I had made a mistake – which I realize most people wonder about anyway, but I knew the Church always taught about temple marriages. So I thought I had pretty much ruined my life. However, having to go out on my own and stop being a “sheep” has been so good for me. I married a wonderful person, became a step-mom instantly, and feel like God has been showing me my own path.
Segullah: Tell us about your background and how you became interested in art.
Emily: I’m the middle of 7 children, 2 boys, 5 girls. My mom is an artist, my dad is a gynecologist. I’ve got art coming in on both sides, as my dad’s only sister was an artist, and my mom is a painter now. Growing up, she wasn’t painting as much as she does now. (Find her on Instagram @ debfoxart. She paints temples.). She was always sewing, running a silk floral arrangement business, knitting, remodeling our home, or landscaping our yard. She is an incredibly creative and active person, always making something.
And then my dad is a highly skilled surgeon and very particular and detail oriented when it comes to surgery, woodworking, or playing the guitar. My sisters have all graduated from college in the Humanities: creative writing, documentary film, interior design, and nursing (ok that’s not a humanities topic, but she’s a musician on the side.:-) My brothers are into business, but in any case I come from a very musical and creative family.
I have ALWAYS loved art. My mom used to draw little black and white marker faces on circles cut out of cardstock and then she would glue them to a popsicle stick. I loved playing with them, and more than that I loved watching my mom draw the faces for me.
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All the beauty you will ever need by Emily Fox King
My mom and dad gave me free rein on projects and a lot of support. My mom always let me use her sewing machine and craft room for my projects (which now that I’m a parent myself, I can see how annoying that must have been). I didn’t take any art classes in high school, (I was too busy playing the bass guitar accompanying my school’s jazz choir) yet I was so sure that I would study art in college. There wasn’t any other major on the planet as far as I was concerned.
I always thought I was good at drawing. Then I went to college and realized that I’m a crummy technical drawer. I’ve always struggled with “realism.” I went to Ricks for the first two years of college and had some incredible drawers in my classes, they could outdraw me any day, but I was always good at imagining things, distorting, exaggerating. I had some incredible instructors, who helped me with those technical skills.
After two years, I transferred to Western Washington University in my home state. That school is in Bellingham, WA. That school and town contrasted greatly from the small, rural, LDS-populated town of Rexburg. There’s a big hippy vibe in Bellingham; Church members were few in number; the politics were very liberal, and you could smell the scent of freshly burning marijuana everywhere. I loved it! I had some great instructors and thrived in the creative and nurturing atmosphere. I graduated from WWU with a BA in “Painting.”
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35 by Emily Fox King
On a whim, at Christmas break, I decided to apply to grad school at BYU. I had been rejected from attending BYU right out of high school but now with a portfolio, an okay GPA, and recent diploma, I applied for an MFA there. I was surprised to find out that I had been accepted. I was relieved also, because it meant putting off “the real world” for a couple more years. I was spared having to find employment for a little while longer. Let me clarify that I always worked through college and had a part-time job while going to school. I just had never had an art career job.
I should also mention, that I served a Spanish speaking mission to the California San Fernando Mission, in the mix of my schooling years at WWU. It was great and really difficult. An eye-opening and growing experience for sure! I still love speaking Spanish and have traveled throughout Mexico, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru.
Segullah: And you have an “art career job” now?
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Smaller works by Emily Fox King
Emily: I’ve taught adjunct for Weber State for 7 years, and I taught one summer out on the Ute Reservation in a program for native students taking college courses through Utah State University (It was awesome and I learned a lot!). I teach mostly introductory classes so many of my students are not majoring in art.
I’ve heard over and over through the years students talk about how taking my class awakened something in them, how they enjoyed being creative, how nourishing it was for their soul (in not so many words). I love that. I don’t really care about the product or what my students make, I’m just glad they are making stuff. I try not to be a snob about Art and what my students make. (We can talk about grad school snobbery another day! ha!) I try to celebrate creativity in whatever its forms. I think we all need it.
Lately, I’ve noticed the subject of creativity creeping up in General Conference and Church website articles. It’s part of being a whole human, a spiritual being. All the time I was having my babies, getting my family here, working different jobs to help get my husband through school, I was quilting, sewing, making crafts, and cooking. My art didn’t have any direction, nor did I allocate any time for “arting,” but I definitely kept making and being creative. I often feel like an “art missionary” in my classroom. I’m trying to convert people to allow themselves more creativity.
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Watching is Helping by Emily Fox King
Segullah: Now that you’re a mom, how do you manage to balance parenthood and your creative work?
Emily: I think it’s hard for everyone. Most artists I know who have kids, stay up late and night and work. I find that reassuring, because I work late too. The next day I’m a grouch and then I go teach my classes, cook dinner, partially clean it up, put kids in bed, and then work into the night, eating candy bars and listening to “Hamilton” to stay energized and awake. It feels kind of desperate and crazy.
I don’t do that all the time, just in spurts, especially when I have a deadline coming up. It’s REALLY HARD. I can’t say that enough. It’s difficult to make room for an art practice in my life right now.
I never have enough money for art supplies, time for creating, new ideas, etc. blah blah blah, plus I’m fat, plus does anybody even care? why am I doing this? who do I think I am? and on and on goes the self-talk. I also feel bad that I can only juggle a few activities in my life right now. I may be successfully working on art these past couple of years, but I haven’t formally exercised in months. In my pre-kid days I used to run half marathons, do triathlons and swim on a Master’s Swim team. There are so many obstacles to making art, and so many other demands on my time. If it wasn’t so hard, I don’t think I would do it. If it was easy the work might be lame.
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A Sexless Marriage by Emily Fox King
Segullah: Your work lately is primarily vivacious, abstracted floral painting. How did you move from installation art and visual critique of traditional norms of femininity into the rambunctious floral paintings?
Emily: I was living out in Vernal, Utah while my husband worked as a Petroleum Geologist. We lived in a one bedroom apartment, I was pregnant with my daughter, and my son was 2, and my stepson was 7. My dad wanted a new piece of art for his waiting room, so I painted him a large 4 x 5 ft. floral and delivered it to him. It was at his house in Idaho, waiting to go to the office when his neighbor came by. She saw it and loved it, so I sold it to her. The next day, I worked all day in my parent’s garage and painted my Dad another one.
They were fun to make and I didn’t have to concentrate too hard. After that I went back to Vernal and completed 9 more large florals. I painted these while heavily pregnant and all in the tiny kitchen of the apartment. Many of those pieces are still being sold as reproductions.
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art by Emily Fox King
The floral paintings have come out of this new stage in my life. I love/hate being married, having small children, being an artist. I see a lot of beauty in my life, and SO MUCH conflict that was never there before. This reminds me of a book I read called, “All Joy and No Fun.” It was about research on what happens to people after they become parents. There is so much joy and beauty, complexity, and richness in my life that was never there before, yet, I find taking care of small children, getting along with my husband, and handling the back-and-forth of my step-son (we have joint custody, so he yo-yo’s around 2 families all the time) incredibly tedious, frustrating, and simply put, NO FUN.
People ask me if I have a favorite flower. I think this is an interesting question because it assumes that I’m thinking about flowers when I paint and that I’m trying to capture a likeness or essence about flowers. Honestly, I really don’t care that much for individual flowers nor do I love “floral work.”
I hope my flower paintings convey beauty and chaos, with the richly layered with paint, fiercely and aggressively applied. Sometimes the colors don’t go together up close, but backing up, the painting tends to harmonize. A comment I hear often from people is, “Wow! Your paintings are so happy!” I want to reply, “No they’re not, can’t you see the RAGE?”
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What I’m Trying to Say by Emily Fox King
But that’s my point. I think life, motherhood, womanhood, is a mixed bag of beauty, chaos, uncertainty, anger, and resignation, all in one. In the end it’s freaking gorgeousness! That’s what these florals are about.
Segullah: That background makes them even more compelling! Rage and beauty! Sounds like life to me!
I liked this quote from Shawn Rossiter’s article about your recent gallery exhibit in Salt Lake City:
King does not seem particularly eager to spell out what she is doing with these paintings. ‘Can’t you just look at the painting?’ she asks of the rhetorical critic who would like her to explain her work. ‘That’s why I’m a painter, so I don’t have to “say” it…’ she comments, recalling her university days, when the need to talk about or write about one’s work was paramount. ‘Maybe I’m still immature,’ she muses with characteristic honesty. ‘If I had to say it, I might not want to stand by it.’
Segullah: Can you tell us a bit about the process of making your floral paintings?
Emily: I love to work big! To save time, I work on pre-stretched canvases and only make them as large as can fit in my car (48 x 60 in.). I start with house paint or acrylic craft paint and put bright colors down. After that I use oils. Sometimes I have my kids help me paint the acrylic layers down. My boys aren’t that interested in art, so I bribe them by paying a dollar for them to paint on the canvases first and get some lines and shapes down for me to work off of.
Segullah: I love it! The practicality is fabulous. And I love that you’re using little apprentices!
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Emily Fox King’s studio
Emily: I don’t pre-plan or spend any time sketching because it’s tedious. and my time for painting is so precious these days that I just want to jump into the good stuff. That’s another reason that I’m really enjoying florals right now. I don’t have to concentrate on shading, getting a likeness, wondering if the flowers look right. I just go for it. They’re flowers and they forgive me.
I rotate my canvas around a lot as well, working on the painting upside down, or on its side. Often, right at the very end, I will switch the orientation of the canvas because I like the movement or energy that is created by turning the picture upside down, etc.
Right now, I really love color and texture, thick oil paint, and visible brush strokes. Painting “flowers” has always been more about paint and color than “flowers.” I do look at pictures of flowers to begin my paintings, but I make up a lot of stuff in the paintings. I don’t know if some of those color combinations even exist in nature as I manufacture them to work in my paintings. I love that flowers represent femininity, and so I DO enjoy that aspect of them for subject matter.
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Deal With It by Emily Fox King
Also, if we are going for honesty here, I like how marketable flowers are. I used to paint images of dolls, and vintage portraits of people. They were always a little bit creepy and celebratory at the same time. I loved making those images, but nobody ever bought them, and so it was difficult to keep producing art and having it pile up in my apartment. I LOVE that people want to buy my paintings now that I’ve put flowers in them, I like to think that they still have all the darkness and awkwardness of the earlier doll paintings and portraits, but that glorious “opposition in all things” dark energy is couched in flowers. I hear this a lot, “Oh, your work is so cheerful!” And that’s ok, but I know that there’s more than JUST cheer going on.”
Segullah: Thank you so much, Emily. I appreciate the enthusiasm and candor in your words and your truth-telling in your artwork which is sumptuous and multi-layered in so many ways! Thanks for sharing your “freaking gorgeousness” with us at Segullah!
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