at home: Artists in Conversation | Emma Stibbon

Emma Stibbon talks with Freyda Spira, Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale University Art Gallery

About Emma Stibbon

British artist Emma Stibbon was born in 1962 in Münster, Germany and lives and works in Bristol, UK. Her work is rooted in landscape, depicting environments that are undergoing dynamic change and transformation, including coastlines, deserts, polar regions, and volcanoes. She aims to understand how human activity and forces of nature shape our surroundings. Stibbon often works alongside geologists and other scientists doing field research, then returns to her studio to create large-scale drawings and prints.

Stibbon received her BA in fine art from Goldsmiths, University of London, and her MA in research fine art from the University of the West of England, Bristol. In 2013 she was elected to the Royal Academy. She has been an artist in residence at several sites, including Antarctica with the Scott Polar Research Institute and HMS Protector (2013); Death Valley National Park (2019); Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park (2016); the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, CT (2016); and the Svalbard archipelago as part of the Queen Sonja Print Award residency (2022). Recent exhibitions include Desert Sublime, University of San Diego Humanities Center Gallery (2023); Vanishing Point, Gallery Bastian, Berlin (2022), Fire and Ice, Alan Cristea Gallery, London (2019); Ruskin, Turner, and the Storm Cloud, York Art Gallery and Abbot Hall, Cumbria, UK (2019); Territories of Print, Rabley Drawing Centre, Wiltshire, UK (2019); and Ice Limit, Polar Museum, University of Cambridge, UK (2015).