Perspectives: Emma Fick

Guided by curiosity, the Covington artist’s work is a witness to, and evocation of, life’s patterns

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Artist Emma Fick attributes her affinity for patterns to her literary eye. Wherever she looks, she sees them: the repetition of motifs, how symbols communicate with one another, weaving across cultures to create new meaning. 

Traveling across Thailand in 2018, she noticed the niches: a pattern of containment practiced in the homes and temples she entered—a tendency to place treasured objects, or “amulets,” in some sort of enclosure. “I am drawn to this notion that each object you hold dear has its own small home, its little landing place, its niche,” she writes on her website, explaining the concept for her “Amulet Chest” watercolors (patterns in and of themselves)—which depict Louisiana-specific objects of nature, including sixteen Mamou seeds or Magnolia pods, each in its own tiny niche encased in a larger “amulet box”. 

“Anytime you see a niche, or something enclosed or elevated, it is because someone has deemed it holy,” Fick explained. It’s a historical tidbit she learned as part of her research process, which is guided by curiosity at its heart. “I just observe, and things that pique my interest, I delve into,” she said. “And like on a beginner’s level. I check out books from the library if I can, or will just Wikipedia, see where that takes me. I really like guiding my continued learning, and I don’t take it too seriously, just letting my interests guide me.” 

The Covington native’s interests range from ancient Byzantine religious art to Louisiana floral hybrids, from Russian folklore to the female form. With degrees in English Literature and Art History from the University of Alabama, Fick describes her work as, at its core, a symbiosis of the literary and the visual. 

In her first book Snippets of Serbia—conceived while she was teaching English there on a Fulbright scholarship in 2015—her series of illustrated observations interact with written commentary on the idiosyncrasies of Serbian life. A departure from her plans to pursue a master’s degree in literature, the success of these watercolor illustrations set her on the first steps towards her “accidental” career as a full-time artist. 

She replicated the concept—illustrating the minute details of worlds both familiar and strange—once she returned to the United States, publishing Snippets of New Orleans in 2017. Shortly thereafter, her work shifted into the realm of fine art. The words are still there, she said, if not literally on the page. “It’s almost like you can decode the image and read it like a text,” she said. “If you know what each symbol means, you can read the story.” 

“Composites of cultural vocabularies,” Fick’s fine art paintings are separated into cohesive series with each their own original concept. Visual motifs garnered from research, travel, iconography, and personal symbols come together in individual mythologies and explorations of culture and selfhood. Some of these motifs—such as the niches, or magnolia pods—reappear in new bodies of work, patterns of intrigue resurfacing to connect the old to the new, building on Fick’s investigations of the world around her.  

Her “Entwined” collection, for example, is a series of works in which various vase-like vessels are displayed on pedestals (representing holiness) against wallpaper-esque patterns, each connected to its neighbors via tangles of red thread. The thread is a personal symbol, she explained—perhaps the one she employs most often. 

“It symbolizes resourcefulness. Thread can mend. With it you can make something out of nothing. Or you might think something is ruined, but it can still be salvaged.” The color represents resilience; red is a color that stains. “So, I like these two things combined—this personal symbol of resourcefulness and perseverance.” 

The vessels stand in for the self, she said. “Humans are vessels for our emotions, our experiences, and there is this tension from what you can see on the outside—this beautiful painted exterior, and what it hides on the inside.”

Fick said she created the “Entwined” paintings during the pandemic of 2020, when she was contemplating these themes of resourcefulness and human connection. The red thread weaving its tangled way from vessel to vessel—“It came from this idea of … with resourcefulness and resiliency, we can seek to connect to other humans. And sometimes it’s successful. Sometimes it is all tangled up.” 

This year, Fick’s work has come full circle as she puts the finishing touches on her newest book, Border Crossings: A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway, to be published by HarperCollins Design in 2022. In the style of her first two illustrated books, the travelogue chronicles her 2015 twenty-six-day, eight-city voyage along the Trans-Siberian Railway across Asia to Moscow, capturing moments like ice fishing in Russia and eating shoe sole cake in Mongolia through Fick’s signature illustration style and written narratives. 

When she is not reminiscing on these pre-pandemic adventures that informed so much of her work, Fick said she spends her time immersed in the world of Louisiana flora and fauna—her most recent enchantment. As an artist-in-residence at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, she focuses in on the significance of the Louisiana iris, or the okra seeds carried here by enslaved Africans, and she paints them, again and again—creating an entire collection of patterns all her own.

See more of Fick’s work at emmafick.com, and pre-order her book, Border Crossings: A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway on Amazon.