EMMA JUNE JONES

Emma June Jones (b. 2000, Chicago, IL) is a painter based in New York City. She earned her BFA in Illustration with a minor in Art History from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2023. Working primarily in oil, Jones builds dreamlike, distorted figures that navigate the psychological terrain of contemporary womanhood. Bodies press into tight, often claustrophobic spaces where animals, objects, fashion, and color double as stand-ins for identity, desire, and unease.

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Her process begins in the sketchbook—an intimate diary where drawing captures fragments of thought, invisible friends, and the emotional residue of an unstable upbringing. These sketches, raw and unfiltered, often multiply into scenes where internal voices appear as figures of their own. From there, they evolve into larger compositions, holding onto their immediacy while stepping into more concrete scenarios with colors that give the painting a time, place and feeling. Much of Jones’s work reflects her personal history, especially the complexities of growing up with a twin in a household marked by substance abuse, neglect, and loss. These origins feed her exploration of a psychological multiplicity, where figures are both self and other, voices layered within one body.

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Since moving to New York, Jones’s paintings have taken on new urgency—charged with spontaneity, performative gesture, and sharper emotional clarity. Her recent works open into wider spaces, where humor and discomfort coexist and surreal figuration unfolds with theatrical force. Symbolic objects, exaggerated limbs, and shifting scale act as mirrors of interior states. The narrative is never distant—it is lived. Lover, friend, twin, family, and self all blur together, appearing not from reference but from obsession, memory, and the moment at hand.