Ema de Lanerolle [they/them]

Ema de Lanerolle [they/them] was born in 1986 to his Sri Lankan parents in Montreal, Quebec. Their family eventually settled in southern Ontario, where Ema still resides today. Ema is self-taught and primarily works with oil paints, watercolour, and print-making to create vibrant visual explorations into a range of topics including love, science, war, nature, sex, philosophy and society. 

Ema’s art is collaborative in nature; it is dependant on the ways the viewer Experiences and Perceives life (EXP). Even art with intentional imagery and curated content can be interpreted differently given the lense from which the viewer is looking. From this, each viewer, as each artist must, draws on their own existence and accumulated memories. The artist’s and the viewer’s emotions are both embedded in colours, shapes and textures throughout their work. Each painting is meant to impact the viewers’ personal understanding; this process inevitably becomes a shared experience.

Ema, from a young age, has always been immersing themself in art and used art as a tool to explore existential topics such as love and fear, happiness and sadness. Ema has always been fascinated by the idea of different realities and topics of spirituality. They credit this to an early memory of having an out-of-body dream- one where they were both experiencing and perceiving their reality. E.J. decided to pursue their passion and in 2008 completed their degree in Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Windsor. Towards the end of their university career, Ema. discovered and began exploring and expressing these themes through visual mediums. 

Ema would describe their art as a hybrid of theory and process. Their art is a representation of what they was experiencing and perceiving at that moment in time. This collection invites their viewers to both imagine and immerse themselves into both the individual and collective Experience and Perspective (EXP).

Photograph by Monique Wiendels.