Emily Moores

Emily Moores is a recent graduate from the Cleveland Institute of Art. She majored in Painting with an Emphasis in Visual Culture and Theory. She received the Nancy Dunn Memorial Scholarship for travel, and spent two weeks studying pre-Columbian vases and ruins in Mexico. Emily has exhibited her works at the Dougherty Art Center, Pump Project Art Gallery, Morgan Conservatory, Zygote Press and The Cleveland Foundation. She currently lives and works in Austin, Texas.

While the word spirituality often connotes thoughts of inspiration, in actuality it is not necessarily always positive and uplifting, nor does it necessarily require one to spend hours alone in solitude. Spiritual awareness does depend on an interaction with the physical world, and is a process of questioning and understanding what exists around us. Through their lack of specificity, my current drawings question the environments that surround us. Not only is the physical world relevant, but necessary in developing a spiritual awareness. I begin making my drawings with references of real spaces. As I work, I take away many of the concrete elements that link the image to the actual place. These images have simple compositions mixed with a feeling of tension. I find that a feeling of emptiness creates tension and questions how the space operates. These questions are what I find to be the crucial part of developing a sense of spiritual awareness.