Emily Ritz’s art externalizes her inner world, creating a surreal parallel universe to live vicariously through. Spanning across mediums including paintings, drawings, ceramics, tattoo and embroidery, her creative process is meditative and intuitive. She builds textured, sensual imagery layer by layer, detail by tiny detail blurring the boundaries between body and Earth, strength and vulnerability, pleasure and pain.
Coming from a lineage of prolific textile artists, Ritz's work is marked by intricate patterns and repetition making for a soothing practice as she explores themes of grief, identity, sacrifice and sexuality.
On the surface, her paintings are corporeal stories with her subjects in a state of metamorphosis, be they plant, animal or human. The figures in her paintings are submitting to a natural world without struggle, a metaphysical journey accessible through the human body as a portal to the spiritual.
Emily, who has suffered from autoimmune disease since childhood, finds parallels between her physical pain and the pain of a deteriorating Earth. Fragile yet resilient, it is a kinship built on shared vulnerability and powerlessness. Simultaneously finding a wealth of inspiration and wisdom from the natural world and grieving its destruction, Ritz surrenders her body to it. In a way her work is a profound apology.