The Art of PR returned to Coningsby Gallery this month with renewed energy and a clear mission: to reveal the creative depth within the UK’s public relations community. Among the most arresting works on show was Emily Rose Halladay’s “Father (2013)”—a painting that stops you first with feeling, then invites you to study its construction.
A creative at global entertainment agency Stellar, and a Central Saint Martins alumna in advertising, Emily brings the discipline of visual communication into a studio practice defined by impasto oil—portraits, landscapes, and abstract works built as much as painted. “Father (2013)” is a potent example: the surface is alive with layered, sculptural strokes, each mark carrying intention. The brushwork alternates between decisive, plank-like sweeps and smaller, agitated passages that seem to vibrate with withheld emotion. In places, the paint stands proud of the canvas, catching light and throwing micro-shadows that deepen the work’s sense of presence. You don’t just see the figure—you feel the weight of memory pressed into the paint.
Emily’s technique leans into the expressive possibilities of oil. The impasto isn’t decorative; it’s structural, building a topography that guides the eye across the face and through the negative space. Edges are allowed to breathe, with soft transitions interrupting bolder ridges, creating a rhythm between revelation and restraint. Her handling of medium—thickened pigment, deliberate drag, and occasional palette-knife scrapes—creates an emotional register that reads before it is consciously decoded.
Tone is the quiet engine of the piece. Emily orchestrates a limited tonal range to powerful effect, grounding the composition in mid-darks that anchor the figure, then punctuating it with lifted highlights along the brow and cheek. These tonal pivots act like inhalations and exhalations, shaping the mood from stern to tender within a single glance. Shadow isn’t just absence; it’s character.
Colour, meanwhile, works beneath the skin of the image. Rather than literalism, Emily layers muted earths and bruised blues with warmer undernotes—ochres, umbers, a suggestion of iron red—to suggest the complexities of memory and relationship. Cool hues steady the gaze; warmer slips of colour pulse like blood under paint. The result is a chromatic tension that keeps the portrait alive: intimate, unsentimental, human.
In “Father (2013),” the convergence of brushstroke, technique, tone, and colour yields a portrait that is both personal and universal. It is a work about presence—the presence of a sitter, of time, and of the artist’s hand. Halladay’s background in communications is evident not in concept alone but in clarity: every mark speaks; nothing is superfluous.
As The Art of PR exhibition shines a light on the creative practices thriving within PR, Emily Rose Halladay stands out as a painter whose language is paint itself—thick, textured, and eloquent. “Father (2013)” is not merely seen; it’s felt. And long after you leave the gallery, it remains—like a remembered voice—resonant.
For further information on the artist, please visit
https://www.instagram.com/eh.artist/
Visit The Occhi Contemporary Art website to see a selection of works from some of the participating artists.
https://occhicontemporary.org/online-gallery/
Father (2013) Oil on Canvas/ 110 x 142cm
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