emily young

Born into a family of artists, poets, writers and politicians, Emily Young grew up in J M Barrie’s house and her youth was spent in London, Rome and Wiltshire. As a young woman in the late 1960’s, Emily travelled widely around the world. In her book Time in the Stone, she talks about living in palaces, castles, slums, mud huts, deserts, forests and mountains, as well as for a while, an Afghan gaol. She studied at both Chelsea and St Martin’s Schools of Art and Stonybrook University New York.  Whilst at Holland Park School in 1966 she became a regular at the London Free School night sessions, which brought her into contact with the UK Underground.  She is reputed to be the inspiration behind the song See Emily Play by Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett.  Her work is held in many international public and private collections including The Whitworth Art Gallery, St Paul’s Churchyard, Salisbury Cathedral, La Defense, Paris and The National Bank of Luxembourg. She is represented by the Fine Art Society of London.The human heads I carve embody my perennial preoccupations: the frailty and quickness of human life and emotions, against the backdrop of the slow inexorable and enduring magnificence of stone, and it’s creation through the long and unspeakably dramatic history of the formation of the Earth. I celebrate the joy of beauty, in all its forms, the appreciation and perception of which is part of being human, of being a part of nature. And I celebrate the way beauty helps to heal the distress experienced by our simply being human.