THE SIT DOWN
13: EMILY PONSONBY
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.
PF: Who or what has influenced your work the most?
Moving to the coast and living amongst a smorgasbord of other creative souls who open my eyes and do cartwheels with my head and heart on a daily basis. We live the reality of my paintings.
PF: Walk us through your creative process?
I’ll be eating toast in a friend’s workshop when an arm reaches across the table. It dawns on me that I’m sitting within my next painting and I replace toast with pen and paper. I sketch from standing, tipping the picture plane and cropping abruptly. Monotypes follow to play and distort the colours and composition and then my tempestuous love affair with molten beeswax is let loose.
PF: What do you want people to feel or take away from your art?
That they’re not alone. I want them to feel like they can slip onto the empty chair at the table, pick up a fork and bring their thoughts or comfortable silence to the conversation. I carve into the layers of the beeswax allowing the gesso ground below to blink through, hopefully drawing the viewer in closer so they feel my rhythm and energy - once again encouraging the warmth of connection.
PF: If you could have dinner with any artist who would it be?
Chantal Joffee. The lilt in her voice is so soothing and the surfaces of her paintings are lick-able. For someone who delights in the butteriness of oil paint as much as she does, I’d suggest we’d eat only with our hands, it would seem fitting. From the many interviews I’ve read I think we’d have an honest, raw and under the carpet conversation which is the only way to communicate in my eyes.
Chantal Joffee. The lilt in her voice is so soothing and the surfaces of her paintings are lick-able. For someone who delights in the butteriness of oil paint as much as she does, I’d suggest we’d eat only with our hands, it would seem fitting. From the many interviews I’ve read I think we’d have an honest, raw and under the carpet conversation which is the only way to communicate in my eyes.
SELECT WORKS
Beeswax and oil on panel
90 cm x 120 cm
Beeswax and oil on panel
120 cm x 90 cm
Beeswax and oil on panel
156 cm x 122 cm
Beeswax and oil on panel
28 cm x 22 cm x 6 cm
Beeswax and oil on panel
115 cm x 160 cm