Emily McIlroy

Emily McIlroy was born and raised in Norman, Oklahoma. She received her BA in Studio Art from the University of Arizona in 2005 and her MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa in 2011. When she’s not in her studio, Emily enjoys reading, writing, and walking and swimming her way through various terrestrial and aquatic wildernesses. She currently teaches in the Drawing and Painting Program at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. She is the author of One Half Living for Two: Cross-Cultural Paradigms of Twinship and Twin Loss.

“My work explores forces and life forms of the natural world as metaphors for human experiences of love, loss, grief, and wonder. Emerging from a repetitive process of rendering and erasure, the creation of my pieces parallels an endless pursuit of reconciling past with present, duration with impermanence, the visible with the invisible. Looking simultaneously both outward and inward, I seek to connect the realm of wilderness—its beauty, violence, power, and fragility—with our own internal territories.”