In our relationship with nature, which drives the limitations of visualization, abstraction and fantasy in our relationship, British artist Emma Webster initiates a contemporary study of aesthetic, philosophy and spirit of landscape, navigating contemporary ideas of landscape between sensory reality and digital manipulation. Inspired by Perrotin, she was inspired by the desolate, arid landscape of the Pacific Palisades, which suffered a record dry season last year. Extreme weather eventually fueled wildfires in Los Angeles, destroying a fragile ecosystem and destroying family homes.
These desolate landscapes, characterized by dark haze and dark atmospheres, seem to hang in a disturbing state of calm, a disaster that precedes the end of the world. In the rotational power of Webster's more abstract gestures, the swelling of the clouds swayed as if anticipating the impetuous outbreak of catastrophic forces.
As Webster demonstrated on his iPad during the walkthrough, most of her paintings begin with digital research on simulated environments—a world she constructs through digital rendering in virtual reality, occasionally using 3D printing to transform into physics. She tends to use technology “in an inappropriate way” by first creating a sculpture and then scanning it into a virtual form. The result is a recursive fantasy of gravity, light, and reality, as if such fictional natural simulations can manifest the presence of the senses.
Attracted by major decisions, Webster admits to being delighted with the rendering of light and texture that defines the creation process of the world, a perfect platform to try to understand and translate the mysteries of nature and its endless power. Her dialectical tension fighting between the representation and expression of nature and the lack of training deliberately transcends the boundaries between tangible reality and ideological invention. It transcends the logic of sensation and material science and becomes image and symbol.
Webster's innovative use of VR has especially furthered her development in terms of dimensions, perceptions and immersion in the images and their experiences. As she explains, using this technique allows the freedom to manipulate light and texture, resulting in potentially infinite deformation possibilities for the same entity. “It activates the puzzle mentality,” she said.
As the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze suggested, there are two ways to overcome imagery, which is both explanatory and narrative. A path moves toward abstraction. Others turn to “characters” are considered a single verified entity that blends sensitive forms with emotional and psychological experiences. In Webster's case, the result is a deliberate, profound artificial replication of natural forms that blur the boundaries between civilian air landscapes, still lifes and certain digital reality. Her fictional environment is carefully designed and staged, never in life, but they seem to possess embedded psychological and mental accusations that are animated by her abstract painting gestures.
It is worth noting that as the description of nature becomes increasingly unreal in the flat 2D representation, the work itself begins to face our impulses provocatively to appropriate, objectify, instrumentalize and anthropomorphize the natural world. Webster told the observer: “They are ominous because they are ominous.” This raises the question: What exactly are we worried about?
However, the next phase of the Webster process brings these images back into the sensory realm, into the soft, tactile problem of oil painting. She admits that it is crucial for her to carefully choreograph the light and build the dramatic Mise-en-Scène, which is amplified drama while bringing the audience deeper into the visual terrain.
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However, on the canvas, the spatial and volume clues collapse on a plane, in a way that is more consistent with the oriental painting tradition. Webster employs strategies to maintain the illusion of a space that feels fictional but may be oddly likely, technologies such as backlighting and no light (borrowed from the vocabulary of cameras and theaters, respectively). “They have realistic light and look realistic, but they are not part of the world,” she said.
What emerges is a dense layered canvas, striving to deal with the ecological crisis caused by the imbalanced relationship between humans and nature. For Webster, the complexity of images is not only inevitable, but also the complexity of everything. From building shoebox dioramas to building a full-scale VR world, she has seen complications as an important part of understanding. “I question how we understand the space and realize it’s about having this feeling of relief, complexity and layering,” she explained.
These ominous landscapes serve as classic idyllic anti-domination points, foreseeing the future of nature that has been destroyed by disconnection and degradation. Webster's paintings insist that environmental disasters are not coming – already here. The “vapor” of disaster lingers on these desolate terrain, has been deprived of vitality and has already flew away without gravity.
Meanwhile, Webster has made a continuous shift in scale, a deliberate strategy that forces viewers to reposition (or at least question) the perspectives we adopt in our contemplation and conception of nature. Even the characters in these scenes, she introduces birds and animals, and is a pure invention: a completely new species without reference. When we go from painting to painting, she admits that she doesn’t even allow herself to Google something real until she paints these incredible forms. They are intentionally static, artificially disproportionate – incredible structures, a trick that nature has already presented as a twisted one. As she explains, painting provides a space where species can exist without being affected by survival or adaptation, which are always bound to function and logic.
It is the skill and virtuality of these images that trap them in suspension, hanging between the Earth, the celestial bodies and the aquatic dimensions. The logic of subtle lighting, scale and sensory perception breaks down, instead creates a more dramatic world, one that creates a mysterious, nearly marriage return, back to our original relationship with nature. The distant performance of this constructed environment elicits a new sense of reverence, a form of worship in which modernity is almost gone.
In this sense, Webster's work brings the same gravity as the sublime defined by Romanticism, a complex weaving of horror and awe that forces us to face our own insignificance and the inevitable power of nature. However, it also signaled toward a spiritual elevation, a deeper appeal to itself for the constant flow of those same energy. Her landscape becomes part of the alchemy cycle – creation and destruction, which is not separate, but has been embedded.
Webster’s goal is not only to create images, but to guide them—both warns of possible futures if we cannot change our paradigm and reveal the fluidity, deformation nature of reality in its essential nature. “These paintings offer something solid, but the world is constantly changing.”
When her work begins with intentional, elaborate renderings of reality, she eventually succumbs to unpredictable image-making logic, leaving space for intuition and unexpected space to intervene – words that may catalyze sudden, transformative epiphanies. “When I make my own paintings, there are a lot of really loose decisions happening,” she added. “I mean, something wrong happened, something good happened. All this improvisation and intuition allowed a sudden revelation because the image showed up in the process.”
Therefore, it is no surprise that the spiritual dimension of this work inevitably manifests itself when the artist discusses the invisible power that makes her process animation. “I think painting is a spiritual act. You don't know what's going on until the end. You have to surrender. It's a little divination.”
It is this attitude that makes her image quiet and universal. They become visual expressions of eternal human impulses, to approach the mysteries of nature, toward our relationship with the world around us, our place in it, and the temporary, ever-changing nature of all things. “I learned to take a step back and admit it has nothing to do with me,” Webster said. “It's something else, collective unconsciousness or some kind of universal force.”
For Webster, the act of creation is itself a form of spiritualism. “From a very scientific family, I found that I could play that,” she said. She reflected that the idea of ”playing as God” (the practice of imagination of world building through painting) was not about imitating reality. It is closer to the gesture of cave painting: a ritual, symbolic practice designed to reminisce about a magical, crucial dimension of survival that goes beyond the influence of human logic and linear time.
In Webster's practice, the integration of new technologies paradoxically restores the old and basic things, which are the original connection to the periodic power of nature. She consciously surrenders to the unconscious process, and she conducts a universal presence and spiritual inquiry: confrontation with what Martin Heidegger calls it Throw. As he describes, human beings are “abandoned” without consent and must guide meaning and authenticity from this condition, reconciling the whole innate bacteria with the actions of external (usually uncontrollable) fate.
Emma Webster's “Vapor” will be enjoyed in Perrotin, Hong Kong on May 17.
