Emma Prempeh wants you to feel what you can’t touch

“I do feel lonely sometimes being a painter,” Emma Prempeh tells me as we sit down to chat in her South East London studio, where she spends many hours in solitude. “But I’m an introvert so I don’t mind. I remember back in the 2020 lockdown, everyone wanted to go outside but I just felt like I was in my element.” It is these introspective qualities that Prempeh brings to her work. Alone, she finds the space to explore what belonging means to her.

Working mostly in paint, Prempeh grapples with memory and the complexities of connection. In her richly layered paintings – infused with personal and familial narratives – home is an ever-shifting concept; something both hard to fully grasp yet deeply felt. “It’s something I’m always going to be fascinated by and will always try to get a hold on,” she says.

The 28-year-old artist has achieved a lot in her career so far. After graduating from Goldsmiths in 2019, she participated in Bloomberg New Contemporaries, the breakthrough group show for emerging art. She went on to win the Alumno/Space bursary award in 2020, the Ingram Collection Purchase Prize and the Valerie Beston Trust Arts award in 2022, after completing her MA in painting at the Royal College of Art under the LeverHulme Trust Arts Scholarship. When I meet Prempeh, the works for her upcoming show at Tiwani Contemporary have only just been collected from her studio. All that remains are a few smaller canvases and a private portrait commission she’s in the midst of. “I wanted to form the show around the subject of home,” she explains. “I touch on it sometimes, but I’ve never delved into it properly until now.” This continues Prempeh’s exploration of her heritage and diasporic experience. “My mum’s from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, she came to the UK when she was 16. My dad’s from Ghana and my fiancé lives in Uganda, where he’s from, so I’m connected to all these different places.”

In this context, the layers of her paintings feel like a visual conversation about displacement. “I’ve been trying to get to the source of all the stories my mum told me growing up. She always spoke about ‘back home’. So many people talk about ‘back home’, especially people I’ve met from the diaspora,” she continues. This sense of “limbo” takes shape on Prempeh’s canvases, where rooms melt into darkness and figures float between places, without roots, undefined by traditional boundaries of space.

Prempeh’s work has a cinematic, ethereal quality. Her figures – often based on friends and family members – interact in dark, dreamlike interiors that seem both familar and imagined. “I like to focus on interior spaces. My figures are usually floating, you don’t know exactly where they are,” she adds. “I’m interested in what makes me feel familiar within an environment, like a curtain or a fabric or a scent.” Her visits over the summer to Kampala and Saint Vincent, however, shifted her focus slightly. “I picked up painting landscapes and realised how important that’s become for me,” she recalls. “At the moment, my dad is having this big dispute about land – it’s become a heavy part of our relationship over the past two years. Then recently on a trip to Saint Vincent with my mum, we found out someone had built on her land.” These experiences led her to consider not just the emotional interiors of her subjects, but physical landscapes, and how they become so deeply entrenched in memory and identity. “Landscape and scenery are so important in reconstructing memories and the stories my mum would tell me about these places,” she says. This newfound focus was a revelation for Prempeh. “I didn’t think I could paint trees! I remember finishing a landscape painting in three days, I was obsessed with it. I painted it from a photo I took and it felt like I was there in that moment again. It made me realise that it’s not just interior spaces that carry this sense of nostalgia, you can recreate that feeling with the outside world too.”

Prempeh’s use of schlag metal in her paintings – an imitation of gold leaf that rusts and transforms over time – adds a dimension of temporality to her work. “I first thought about using it when I was studying for my BA. I was thinking a lot about creation, why I’m here, genetics, the universe and the subject of time as a whole. I remembered watching videos of this cute lady from somewhere in America making artwork with fake gold leaf.” This material fascinated Prempeh with its ability to change, and like memories and emotions, fade and shift over time. “I wanted to find a material that encapsulates what time actually is.” Her application of the metal, often mixed with vinegar to accelerate the rusting process, transforms her canvases into living objects. “I began to manipulate it on purpose. As they age you can really start to see the green, it has a really interesting patina. The works have changed with me as I’ve moved studio.” These days, she’s more interested in letting time and exposure shape her works naturally, a quiet surrender to the forces that move beyond her control. “I’ve stepped back a bit from it now, using it more to represent light or to highlight parts of people’s faces.”

The evolution of her style is a testament to her persistence, though it wasn’t always easy. “It was tough trying to find my style,” she remembers. “At the start I was like, ‘what the fuck am I doing!?’” The questions driving her practice – memory, existence, time – pushed her to experiment with both her subjects and materials. Her use of earthy tones and rich browns, reflective of her own skin and that of her family, are deliberate, grounding her subjects in both the tangible and cosmic. “When I was finding my style, I was thinking about things that are usually associated with bright colours, like the chakras and space. I wanted to fit myself within that, because obviously I have darker skin and most of my family has even darker skin than me,” she explains. “Blackness is such a heavy thing – you think about black holes and stars and how what’s within them is so dark. I thought I’d stick with black and other tones I like, like brown – like my skin tone.” A connection to memory also informs her colour palette. “I don’t know how other people picture memories in their head. For me, the image is always surrounded by a kind of blurry black border. It’s not quite a frame, it’s almost choppy. That’s also why I work with the colours I do – it aligns with how I see memories in my head.”

What stands out most about Prempeh’s work is its intimacy. One of her favourite pieces, Go Liming (2022), offered her a rare moment of fulfillment. “It’s so rare to truly feel like a piece is finished. I’ve only felt that with this piece. And I’ve never had that feeling again.” The more I learn about Prempeh, the clearer it is that painting isn’t just about capturing a moment, but about creating one. “When I paint, I’m sharing my perspective of what I’m seeing and experiencing. It belongs to me, but I hope that other people feel some sense of familiarity with it, or have some relationship with it,” she says. Painting has become a way for her to assert control over fading memories and experiences, a way to grasp what so often slips through her fingers. “Everything is so fleeting, I sometimes can’t grasp it. With painting, I can evoke feelings that I can’t do taking a photograph.”

For her upcoming show, Prempeh has experimented with moving image. “When my mum and I went to the Caribbean this summer, I knew I had to document it. She hadn’t been back to visit in 40 years.” She plans to use light projections as a metaphor for memory. “I want people to feel that fleeting point of our lives that we know exists but can’t touch.”

Prempeh’s connection to her mother and the matriarchal strength in her family has been a guiding force in her life. “I grew up with my mum more than my dad. She always told me that you can achieve things on your own,” she reflects. “My grandma moved to the UK by herself, so I’ve always had these very strong women in front of me. Exploring womanhood is really important. When I think about the galleries I’ve worked with, I was usually looking for women. I enjoy the feeling of safety amongst other women.” However, her artistic influences have recently expanded to include artists like Andrew Cranston and Mohammed Sami. “An artist at the RCA told me my work reminded them of Noah Davis,” she recalls. “I was introduced to his work in the midst of when I was developing my style, so it was amazing to see how someone else was painting such similar subjects to me.”

The search for belonging also played a role in her relationship with Tiwani Contemporary. Her story with the gallery started when she was a teenager. “When I was 16 I applied for a curator position they advertised online. I didn’t have any experience curating! I applied because I was looking for a gallery that I felt I would fit with – they were working with artists from Africa and the diaspora. When I finished my BA I was introduced to Adelaide Bannerman, the curator. After my MA they approached me to work with them – I obviously didn’t mention my application from when I was 16! It’s weird how things come full circle.”