Emma Price
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Jun 25
- 3 min read
Emma Price creates fictional spaces that feel like somewhere in between memory and daydream. She works with video games, digital collage, and mixed media to build quiet, open scenes that leave room for interpretation. A lot of her work comes from a personal place—drawing on moments of escape, curiosity, and a desire to slow things down. She focuses on atmosphere and builds each piece in a way that feels calm and open.
Q: When did video games shift from being a form of escape to becoming part of your artistic process?
A: I still see the video game aspect to my art process as an escape, as well as something that has become a tool or process I use to investigate how other realities, real or fake, operate and how they can differ and relate to our world, especially when it comes to world-building within games.
I think after some upsetting real-life events, I definitely wanted to create my own escape— even more so in these games I adored, such as "Skyrim". I just fine-tuned what I manipulated and re-created within the scenes. It is a great thing when you have something in mind that you want to see and you make it real—even if it’s ‘real’ in a video game, that’s still somewhat real to me. And I get such fulfillment from the world-building.
Q: What draws you to barren landscapes?
A: I became drawn to barren or liminal spaces definitely at the start of my artistic journey. During college, the first series of photographic works always had a liminal, otherworldly feeling to them. It then evolved into images containing strong horizons with maybe a strange silhouette or person in it—always just a horizon and one other character—and these places never felt real or unreal, somewhere in between, and I loved that. I think because a running topic in my work is playing with time—what was and what could be, what is real and what isn’t—these strange barren landscapes are places made up to exist that fall in between all of those.
Q: Do you see world-building as a way to reflect this world or get away from it?
A: I have only realized the answer to that question lately, and it’s to get away from this world. But I think there will always be underlying reflections or comparisons.
It can actually be something that is bittersweet, because the places I create in the games can never exist really. But just to have them imagined and made up of pixels will do—for now!
Q: Your work moves between myth, memory and imagined spaces—do these places feel personal to you?
A: Those topics are definitely what the essence of the work is made of. And yes, without any of my own personal relations or emotions bleeding into them, the work wouldn’t exist.
There is always something personal beneath or within them, even if it may not be visible. These places represent, to me, a place I long to be in, a place that reminds me of someone, of love and of loss. Everything in them represents my inner being. But other people can take what they want from it—that’s the best part. It’s something else entirely for others.
I sometimes like to think of them as places in between life and death—not so much purgatory, but where time doesn’t exist as we know it. And we can find everything we have ever known and loved there. Pure childhood fantasy at play.
Q: How did working in a gallery influence how you approach your own work?
A: For that it was great. I am constantly influenced by artists of all different mediums, but it was always painting I looked to—landscapes especially—and the emotional depth they always carried. I was exposed to many wonderful Irish painters in "Crawford Art Gallery", both historical and contemporary, and I spent time with them while I worked there, just to see what I took from it and how it may relate to how I work. It was always moody landscapes—some maybe had a figure in them—but they were a strong influence, so I am very thankful I was immersed in that environment.
Q: Is there a moment in the process—modding, layering, lighting—that feels the most like storytelling to you?
A: I think the most storytelling happens when I have some of those in the works and I take a step back, listen to music—maybe ambient sounds—and I look at it and know when the story is being told. They all come together in different ways: the plants, the sky, the light. It happens when I look at them all together, at some point—I think at the end.
