Paper Trail exhibition by John Emery

My fascination with the scraps and fragments of how things record memories started when I was a child. I spent hours exploring my grandparents’ long forgotten trunks. Old notebooks, faded papers, postcards and bits of string attracted me. But it was always the undefined fragment of an object or the battered leather cover of a journal that fired my imagination.

Over the years I have continued to be drawn to the visual power of journals, maps, and the typography of recording a time and place. My own journals take the form of sketchbooks and small watercolors that provide the basis for my work. These paintings are visual chronicles experiences, travels and adventures. The watercolor sketches, layered snippets of landscapes, visual textures and tromp l’oeil objects are constructed completely of paper. The objects, like memories, are often not what they seem. The shifting perspective and use of three-dimensional formed paper provide the environment, but it is the viewer who must complete the story.

View John's portfolio