Emil Sands

Emil Sands (b.1998) is a London born painter and writer, currently living in New York. His large canvases focus on semi-nude figures, often viewed from behind, in landscape and beach settings. Skies are expansive and blue, sunlight bounces off water, bodies glow golden; Sands paints scenes that offer the promise of freedom and release from the workaday….or so it appears. Caught seemingly unaware and lost in thought, he captures the tiny, physical idiosyncrasies that instantly identify us – the concentrated tilt of a head, the awkward scratch of the back of a head, the relaxed slump of a body with hands placed on hips. His figures are uninhibited, vulnerable, exposed and like many artists who have come before him, Sands explores the complex relationship between the viewer and his subject, between seeing and being seen. ‘My paintings are voyeuristic,’ Sands observes, ‘and only getting more so..I have cerebral palsy and the limitations of my body left me on the outside, looking in…these open landscapes make me want to run, swim, jump,..they are for me electric landscapes. But they are also landscapes that have historically betrayed me, terrains I still find tough to cross.’ Photographing and drawing friends and family as well as strangers he has observed in preparation for painting, Sands’ works play with the subtle narratives inherent in all depictions of the human figure and meditates on the fragility and illusion of the body beautiful.