dALE eMMART
Dale Emmart earned a BFA from Cooper Union and an MFA from RISD. A teacher for many years at Parsons School of Design, Fordham University, New York Institute of Technology, RISD, The Allen-Stevenson School, The Cathedral School, and Department Head of Art at The Brearley School, she is now exclusively in the studio. Emmart has had numerous group and solo exhibitions in New York City, Hudson, NY, and eastern Pennsylvania. Her work is in private and academic collections in Europe and the USA. She has directed Plein Air Portugal, an artists’ retreat in northern Portugal, for the past ten years. She has been an NYFA recipient and granted fellowships at the Dieu Donne Papermill, The MacDowell Colony, and VCCA.
Beyond my studio door, I see the horizon line: static, ever-present between shifting forms above and below. Scrutinizing this active line is a prominent motivation for my landscape paintings and a dependable source for large-scale tonal works on paper. I split my concentration between works on paper, plein-air landscapes, still-life reference oil paintings, and unique artist books. Working in the field, on-site has broadened my response to fleeting light and underscored my understanding of the urgency of our environment. My paintings suggest an ideal rural topography with uncluttered interruptions of the horizon by man-made objects. In contrast, the monochromatic works on paper use exhaust, smoke, or cloud formations and cast shadows of obstacles like ropes and knots to occupy square or verticle compositions that brood over environmental or physiological fragility.
