Emily Rose Ryan
In her series of works entitled Mein Leben in Kinder und Hausmärchen, Emily creates drawn retellings of German folklore and fairytales both in connection to her own life and as a vehicle for telling personal stories. Much of her work thematically deals with her own attempts at emotionally processing her complicated connections to her heritage, culture and family. Her work primarily utilizes colored pencil and calligraphy ink to emulate texture and techniques seen in oil painting. In these drawn retellings she also employs traditional folk art techniques, namely Bauernmalerei. Bauernmalerei refers to a form of decorative art spread throughout southern Germany and other alpine regions over the past three centuries. It includes stylistic variations depicting colorful flowers, vegetal designs, birds, and scrolls decorating every conceivable surface of wood, metal and even glass. Her incorporation of bauernmalerei is used to create the frame of each of her pieces. This is intentional, not only to highlight the beauty of this form of decorative folk art but also to emulate the decorative borders of fairytale books. It is an art form that is a source of childhood nostalgia for Emily.
Remembering how it existed on wooden frames and surfaces in her grandmothers and childhood home. Each artwork within the series is intended to serve as a page within a fairytale book and together tell fragmented stories from Emily’s life. Through her medium and technical application she creates an overall dreamlike and surreal quality in her works, that sometimes spills over the frames edges to draw viewers into the stories themselves. Audiences need not be familiar with German folklore to identify with her work as she believes that the stories and emotions evoked can resonate with many.
