“I have words I do not know how to speak within me, and so I paint. I create paintings driven by a curiosity to understand an emotion or feeling and a need for storytelling when words do not come.” Emily Shackleton, a resident of Haarlem, NL, is an artist who returned to painting in 2020 after a decade-long career in fashion design. Her works exude a cinematic intensity, employing gestural marks and high contrast to depict everyday scenes. She works mainly on upcycled bases, using found wood, old book covers and fabric scraps. Painting in layers, her visible brushstrokes and sketchlines add energy and movement to the work. Her belief that “painting is as much about what you leave out as it is what you put in” leaves varying levels of descriptive elements and provokes the imagination. These subtleties allow the viewer to experience a painting with their own interpretation.