Arty Award-winning UFV alumna talks feeling through art
UFV alumna, Emily Gauthier, won the Emerging Artist category at this year’s Abbotsford Arty Awards. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an extended minor in graphic design and visual arts. Emily currently works at Flying Horse Design Studio in Fort Langley as a junior designer, the same company she interned at during her practicum. Her primary mediums are silkscreen (a printing technique using mesh and ink) and copper plating.
As an artist from a young age, Gauthier pursued multiple avenues of artistic expression, from dance and drama to, of course, drawing. After dropping art class, her high school art teacher approached her with the advice to consider art as a possible career path. At the time, she said, she was considering being a nurse or physiotherapist, but when he let her know about an illustration and design course, she dove back into art and pursued it.
Gauthier said she was nominated for the Arty Award by a UFV staff member.
“I was studying under [the staff member] for a little while, she took me under her wing, and I learned a lot.” Gauthier said. “And she said ‘I think you should apply for this,’ and I’m a very humble person. I don’t like to be super in the spotlight, but the fact she had this faith in me led me to apply, and I was really stunned.”
She considers the growth in her body of work to have played a contributing factor in the eventual win of Emerging Artist. According to Gauthier, the recognition by and acceptance into the Abbotsford art scene strengthened both her own platform as an artist and the reputation of the print media department at UFV, which she was involved with quite heavily at the time.
Gauthier’s background in illustration led to her experimentation with traditional mediums as well as digital work with Photoshop and other Adobe programs. Going into graphic design was an extension of wanting to work with a tactile medium. According to Gauthier, graphic designers traditionally worked with their hands, in industries such as the printing press. Nowadays, graphic design work is primarily digital; Gauthier works at a computer for the whole day at her job. Combining her tools from both the digital and traditional sphere was a natural extension of her interest in looking at both the history of art and its future and melding them into one.
In regards to her process of creating art, Gauthier has slightly different approaches when it comes to whether she is working on a piece for work or a piece for herself. Art produced for her job is produced at a much faster pace, due to deadlines.
Much of her own personal work examines mental health as a main theme, and a lot more research is involved — she talks to people in the psychology and counselling fields, reads articles, and researches references and colour palettes. From there, she begins sketching, producing tiny thumbnails done in about a minute. Further sketch studies are built upon the thumbnails, then she proofs (a check-in on what the final result will be) and begins to work with the silk screen machines.
“It’s a long process, but it’s worthwhile in the end,” Gauthier said.
As previously stated, a key theme to Gauthier’s work is exploring mental health. She is particularly drawn to this theme as she, like many people, struggles with it. She sees her art as a way of problem solving, and even created a book to teach kids about anxiety after suffering from anxiety as a child herself. From that project on, she realized she was incredibly passionate about the subject of mental health and found there were not as many conversations when she started as there are now.
“That’s how I thought I could help others,” she said, “by expressing feelings of anxiety [through the art] and how us, as a society, perceive and deal with it, or don’t deal with it.”
Gauthier is currently working on illustrations for books, including Rock Steady by Joey Remenyi and one about Mission plant life. Her work can be found at her website, though it remains under construction at this time, her personal Instagram, or through Flying Horse’s Instagram.
