Emily Ball was born in 1967 in Colchester, Essex. She went to Exeter College of Art for her BA in Fine Art Painting in 1989. She continued painting, doing residencies, undertaking public commissions and exhibiting in the South East and London for the next 10 years. She also established privately run courses in Contemporary Painting and Drawing in West Sussex.
In 1999 Emily completed her MA in painting from The Surrey Institute of Art & Design, Farnham. She had her first child in 2001 and second in 2004 and during this period produced ambitious and successful paintings about her children, some of which are on show in this exhibition. In 2004 she exhibited these at the RA Summer Exhibition and was a prize winner at the National Open Art Exhibition, judged by Maurice Cockrill RA, Jennifer Durrant RA and Nicholas Usherwood, art critic.
In August 2005 Emily moved into her large studio space on the premises of Seawhite of Brighton (supplier’s of art materials) in Partridge Green. In 2009 she published her first book ‘Drawing and Painting People – A Fresh Approach (reviewed by Matthew Collings). She curated her book launch exhibition which was opened by Matthew Collings and Emma Biggs. The show included her work and that of the artists included in the book; Rose Wylie, Roy Oxlade, Georgia Hayes and John Skinner. In 2012 her second book was published ‘Emily Ball – Painting’.
She is currently director of her Painting School ‘Emily Ball at Seawhite’, and has a team of 5 artist tutors running courses. The school has grown, as has its international reputation. Students travel from all over the world to attend courses and Emily also travels nationally and internationally to teach painting courses. Since 2020 Emily and her team have also been running live online and pre-recorded painting courses. In 2019 she was invited on a cultural exchange to China, with 7 other British Artists, where she made paintings and was given the most fantastic opportunity to explore Chinese culture, landscape and painting.
In 2021 her drawing ‘Self Portrait as a ‘Confident Woman’ was selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize and toured around the UK. Currently she is working a new body of work called ‘Longing and Sweet Sadness’ which explores her connection to her childhood home, memories and the feeling of being in the woods behind her parents house. She strives to be a poet in paint, pushing further into the expressive possibilities of translating sensation and experience into a painted visual language.