Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Hampden-Sydney College and internationally acclaimed artist Emma Steinkraus will showcase her work in an exhibition titled Florilegium at Hampden-Sydney College from Feb. 6 till March 8.

Emma Steinkraus is a graduate of Williams College and completed her MFA in Painting in 2016 at the University of Iowa where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Her work has received numerous awards, including a Bethesda Painting Award, a Hubbard Hutchinson Memorial Fellowship, and invitations to residencies at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Pajama Factory, Vermont Studio Center, and Cow House Studio in Ireland. She is an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Hampden-Sydney College and the Visual Arts Editor of Company Editions. More information regarding her work, exhibitions, and awards can be found on her website: emmasteinkraus.com.

Emma Steinkraus’s paintings situate intimate portraits of her family and friends in the lush environment of the Arkansas Ozarks where she grew up. Her large narrative works on canvas combine ink washes, digital photo transfers and figurative painting. These contrasting processes create a varied surface that juxtaposes smooth, highly-detailed, painted passages against accidents, scratches, and fragmentation that arise from the photo transfers. Her paintings often draw on the visual vocabulary of Renaissance artists, mapping religious iconography onto stories of death and rebirth in the environment. Through her depiction of human relationships within a specific ecosystem, her work draws attention to the interconnectedness of our lives and the habitats we live in.

The exhibition can be found in The Gallery of the Viar-Christ Center for the Arts in Brinkley Hall today through March 8, and Steinkraus will also be speaking about her work on March 6 at 7 p.m. in Thompson Commons, also in Brinkley Hall. The exhibition and all events are free and open to the public.