Ponsonby’s work questions how it feels to be nude, to be natural and to be of the earth. She helps her models see their bodies through the eyes of an artist. To appreciate the beauty of their existence.

In 2020, her work began exploring the remedial effects of water, and her watercolour bathers emerged. It was also the first time she worked with Ocki Magill on Blue Shop Cottage’s first rendition of ‘Works On Paper’ – Ponsonby’s works all sold in the first hour of launching.

Magill says: “Emily had travelled off to Tuscany with another friend in her ‘Honda Jazz swollen with canvasses’ to do a self-initiated residency and I watched eagerly as jams were potted and bodies were submerged in cold baths and lakes. Her figures literally emerged from water on a solid dry surface – I remember seeing these works and feeling genuinely moved by them, by how she’d captured that feeling when your warm body emerges from cold water.

“In the heat of that first lockdown as a nation and as a planet we were at once alone but with anxious minds needing and seeking refreshment. Her bathers hit us where we needed to go. We all needed a leap into a cold lake, a shake-up, a ‘shedding of worries and thoughts – finding a tonic’.”

Ponsonby adds: “For years I’ve concentrated on painting a sensation or state of mind rather than a perfect representation of a fixed moment in time. It seems, from the humbling stories I received, that people saw their own inner worlds within these works, within the waves. In a time when our freedom was restricted, they were a tingling release of weightlessness in body and mind.”

Ponsonby and Magill teamed up again in the summer of 2021 for the Blue Cottage Shop’s ‘Bucolia’ group show, which featured four of her works. You can next see her creations in the group show ‘Act One’ this September, which will be curated by Jenny Webber and Fenella Brownlee.

Magill adds: “Emily is a brave artist, she moves herself around, often alone, to source her inspiration and as she connects with others, reading as she goes, absorbing the world around her, her practice develops and builds.”