About Emily Painton

"What I love most about painting is that it gives me the ability to reimagine the world in the way I wish it were. To create a reality that is more interesting to me."

Emily Painton grew up in Norman Oklahoma. By the age of eight she was sitting in on art history classes with her mother at the University of Oklahoma, and at fourteen she began a series of art saturated journeys to Europe. While earning her BFA in Art History and Photography at OU she furthered her studies and travels, spending an extended period studying in Paris, where she had easy access to works by many of her favorite artists. She also fell in love with the city’s architecture, history, art and culture.

She spent a summer in New Orleans at the age of twenty, photographing the city and living and working in the French Quarter. After graduating college in 1995, she moved to Austin Texas, where she continued to dabble in painting, drawing and photography, while trying to make a living.

In 2000 she moved to New Orleans once again, to accept a full tuition scholarship to earn an MA in Art History at Tulane University. She concentrated her studies on 19th Century French art, writing her thesis titled “A Break with the Tradition of Ingres and Degas: Toulouse-Lautrec’s Humanizing Vision of the Women of the Maison Close.”

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina pushed Emily back to Austin Texas, where she happily resides at present, painting faster than her studio has room.