SD - EP — Parallel Form

THE SIT DOWN
13: EMILY PONSONBY

Emily Ponsonby’s (b. 1990) practice begins with material before it arrives at image. Working primarily with beeswax, her paintings are built through a process of layering and removal – an approach that feels less like applying paint and more like uncovering something embedded beneath the surface. Her relationship to making is grounded in technique. Training at City & Guilds, Leith School of Art, and the Royal Drawing School, instilled a discipline rooted in process.

Ponsonby is, by her own admission, deeply tactile – a painter drawn as much to touch as to image. That instinct runs through the work: surfaces are handled, pushed and pulled until something resolves. That tactility carries through to the encaustic method she has developed over time. Beeswax, mixed with pigment and turpentine, is built up in layers before being cut back using blades, cloths, and whatever is at hand. Paintings are pushed far, then stripped back. For Ponsonby, the act of removal is as essential as the act of painting – a constant negotiation between control and release.

Now based in rural Dorset, her subject matter has shifted towards the rhythms of daily life around her. The people she paints are those she lives and works alongside – a close community of writers and makers. Each painting holds a specific moment: a conversation half-remembered, a scent, the trace of a presence that still feels close. These works are lived rather than staged. Days are dictated by weather, by light, by proximity to others living and making alongside her.

Composition remains central. Influenced by artists such as Bonnard and the Nabis, she subtly disrupts perspective – tilting the picture plane, drawing the viewer into the scene rather than placing them at a distance. This sense of quiet immersion is balanced by a structural clarity learned through drawing.

Her process moves between observation and transformation. Drawings made from life are translated into monotypes or etchings, then reworked into paintings – each stage introducing a shift, a slight dislocation. This layered approach mirrors the surfaces themselves: images that feel both immediate and just out of reach.

There is, too, an acceptance of risk. Ponsonby often works multiple paintings at once, allowing marks and decisions to travel across them. Echoing Andrew Cranston, she says a painting should always be five minutes from the edge of a skip, a reminder that nothing is too precious to undo. In Ponsonby’s studio, nothing is safe. A surface can be built over days only to be cut back in seconds – whole paintings are burnt or thrown away if they resist.

With two solo shows at GJG under her belt, Ponsonby has recently returned from a successful trip to NY with the gallery, where her works shifted in scale. Yet the same concerns remain: proximity and the quiet intensity of shared experience. Whatever their size, her paintings hold a particular kind of presence — surfaces that seem to breathe, built from time, attention, and the willingness to let things fall apart before they come together.