Contemporary Birmingham Artist

Emma Woolley

Emma Woolley is a contemporary artist based in Birmingham, UK. Working primarily in portrait painting, her practice explores intimacy, emotional connection, and the quiet spaces that exist between people.

Her work focuses on the human face as a site of presence and vulnerability. Through oil paint, charcoal, and mixed media, Emma creates portraits that feel close, reflective, and psychologically charged. Environmental detail is often stripped back, allowing expression, gesture, and surface to carry the emotional weight of the work.

Painting intimacy and connection

At the heart of Emma’s practice is a fascination with how we experience closeness, distance, and emotional presence. Her portraits are not about likeness alone, but about capturing something felt rather than seen.

Faces are often large in scale, cropped tightly, and rendered with a sensitivity to tone, texture, and mark-making. Shadows, softness, and unfinished areas are embraced as part of the emotional language of the painting, allowing the work to remain open and alive.

Practice and materials

Emma works predominantly with oil paint, alongside charcoal and oil stick, often combining drawing and painting within the same surface. Her process is instinctive and physical, built through layers, erasure, and reworking until the image feels resolved.

Rather than following a rigid methodology, each painting develops through attention, observation, and emotional response. The act of painting itself is central to the work, slow, tactile, and immersive.

Based in Birmingham

Emma lives and works in Birmingham and is actively engaged with the city’s contemporary art scene. Her practice is rooted in place, community, and collaboration, while remaining deeply personal in subject and intent.

She regularly exhibits across the West Midlands and is involved in artist-led initiatives and collectives that support and promote contemporary painting.

Selected exhibitions and activity

Emma’s work has been exhibited in group and curated exhibitions across Birmingham and the wider region, including independent galleries and artist-run spaces. She is a member of local artist collectives and takes part in open studios, exhibitions, and community-focused arts events.

Further details of current and past exhibitions can be found on the Exhibitions and Studio Journal sections of this site.

Explore the work

To view available works, recent paintings, and writing around her practice, visit:
For exhibition enquiries, commissions, or press, please use the contact page.