Em Andreasson

MA Fine Art

I am a figurative artist who uses portraiture and self-portraiture to explore concepts of cognitive dissonance, distorted perception, and the relationship of the self to the self. I use visual media to reveal and investigate suppressed or hidden emotions and intrusive thoughts and to illuminate the internal landscape. My work seeks to expose the beauty and raw emotion that are often obscured by hostile internal thoughts and to inspire myself and my audience to cultivate a more compassionate and accepting relationship with ourselves .

My work for It’s Not About the Gallery is a culmination of my explorations of the internal family system, a concept from psychology. This concept proposes that it is the nature of the human mind to create different personalities to help the core identity (the self) to cope with various experiences, many of which may be overwhelming or traumatic.

Through the lens of my practice, I identified three distinct personalities within my own internal world. Using a variety of different media, I investigated what roles, characteristics, and emotions each personality embodied and how to visually covey those distinct elements.

This process transformed my practice into one that was not only artistic but meditative and healing as well, and the final work produced is the reflection of having developed a deeper understanding and compassion for the self, expressed through auto-portraiture which I hope to share with my audience.