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The Art of Happiness: Emma Walker
Country Style October 2009
Words Alix Johnson, Photograph Jared Fowler
Extract: "I USED TO BELIEVE I had to be miserable in order to produce art," says Emma Walker, smiling. "But it's not true." The 39-year-old is sitting on the deck of the NSW North Coast home she shares with her partner, Simon Pearce, and their two young children Ella. 9, and Buzz, 6. Her back is to the winter sun. Chooks dart about the yard unaware they're destined to be dinner. Freshly planted seedlings sink into the soil of the raised garden beds. A grand old eucalypt towers above the house. The property pulsates with life.
"I love my life here,'Emma says. "Simon and I have made it what we want it to be."
Emma Walker is one of Australia's better known contemporary artists. In 2006, art critic Sebastian Smee described her heavily layered textural work "as audacious as it is poetic". At 26, she burst out of art school with a solo exhibition. The opening night gallery was full to overflowing. Every painting sold; some were haggled over. "I had never experienced anything like it!" she recalls. "I went home and burst into tears. I sobbed and sobbed. My boyfriend at the time said, 'Shouldn't you be happy?' But I was so overwhelmed."
Emma spent her early years in Sydney and at a farm in Cootamundra NSW. She describes her father, Jimmy, as "a pig farmer who dreamt of life on the high seas". By the time Emma was six she had flown to Holland with her older sister, Kathryn, and their mother to join Jimmy on his newly acquired boat.
Her childhood sounds Kke a fairytale: sailing in and out of ports, attending schools in far-flung lands; then, between adventures, returning to the farm where the girls were surrounded by their parents' artist and actor friends.
A young Emma announced to one of those friends that she wanted to be a painter; he took her at her word and became something of a mentor.
That friend happened to be Brett Whiteley and as a teenager Emma spent time painting, drawing and discussing art with the celebrated artist in his Sydney studio.