Emily Kepulis
Emily Kepulis is a mixed media visual artist and muralist living in Portland, Oregon. Her work explores the concepts of home and selfhood and how they are shaped by memory and experiences, recurrently changing and nonlinear. Materializing into imagined landscapes that often home soluble, ambulating figures, Kepulis’s paintings acknowledge home as a physical place as well as a place within the body and a locus of perception. Each layer takes on an immortal quality, albeit much of the time buried by more paint, reflecting the impermanence and adaptability of all we call home, all we call selfhood, as well as their permanence in the present moment and in memory. She references family photos, artwork from her lineage, her own past paintings, and anonymous found photos in further exploration of how we are shaped by that which surrounds us, our perceptions of ourselves, and our attachment to the self in relation to the whole. In layering paint, image, pencil, and archive, Kepulis rehearses the cobbling together of humanness: personally, socially, ancestrally, and spiritually.
Kepulis, Midwest raised, made her way to the Pacific Northwest in 2012 and graduated from Portland State University where she studied drawing, painting, printmaking, and creative writing. Her paintings have been shown with galleries around the United States, Canada, and the UK, most recently Blue Shop Galleries in London and Soft Times Gallery in San Francisco. She has been commissioned for murals and painting projects in both residential and commercial spaces, notably at Teton Lunch Counter in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and a ceiling mural at the entrance of Kimpton Hotel Enso in San Francisco. You can find her writing at the online magazine "The Gravity of the Thing'' as well as in her first solo printed publication titled "Water Briefed." Her paintings have been featured in New Visionary Magazine, Suboart Magazine, and I Like Your Work Magazine, among others.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2024 Summer Selections, Maybaum Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2024 Dumb Luck, 3446 NE Broadway, Portland, OR
2024 Works on paper 6, Blue Shop Galleries, London, UK
2023 Land Between, Never Lab, Portland, OR
2023 Views From The Other Side, Alberta Street Gallery, Portland, OR
2023 Common Ground, 312 2nd Ave S, Group Show, Seattle, WA
2023 Awakenings, Sidestreet Arts, Three-Person Show, Portland, OR
2023 Inside a Memory, Visionary Art Collective, New York, NY
2023 Small Works, James May Gallery, Milwaukee, WI
2023 Layers of Sentiment, Stumptown, Portland, OR
2022 Water Briefed, Lolo Pass, Portland, OR
2021 Canyons were already, Ernie and Gray, Salem, OR
2020 Canyons were already, Jailbreak Studios, Portland, OR
2019 Line and Ligament, The Ou Gallery, Dunca, British Columbia
2019 Horizon Line Sleepwalker, Jailbreak Studios, Portland, OR
2018 Disco Rice, The Hazel Room, Portland, OR
2018 Disco Rice, Turn Turn Turn, Portland, OR
2017 Group Auction Fundraiser, UNA Gallery, Group Show, Portland, OR
2017 Layers of Sentiment, Impossible Box Arts, Portland, OR
2016 A Garden of Forking Paths, Trust Art Collective and Gallery, Portland, OR
2016 3rd Annual Living Mark Exhibition, Verum Ultimum Gallery, Portland, OR
2016 3rd Annual Abstract Sanctuary Exhibition, Verum Ultimum Portland, OR
2016 The Brief History of a Human, ZuZu Salon and Gallery, Portland, OR
2015 The Printmaker’s Hand III, Northwind Arts Center, Port Townsend, WA
AWARDS AND GRANTS
2023 Arts3C Grant, Regional Arts and Culture Council
2021 Make|Learn|Build Grant, Regional Arts and Culture Council
2019 Artist Residency, The Ou Gallery, Duncan, British Columbia
2017 Working Artist Grant Recipient: http://workingartist.org/
PUBLIC ART
2024 Interior Wall Mural, Lunch Counter, Jackson Hole, WY
2024 Exterior Wall Mural, The Courts Skatepark, Portland, OR
2023 Interior Wall Murals, Good Shepherd Village, Happy Valley, OR
2023 Exterior Mosaic Mural, Portland, OR
2023 Interior Wall Mural, Henry Higgins, NW 23rd, Portland, OR
2023 Interior Wall Mural, Henry Higgins, Sellwood, Portland, OR
2022 Exterior Ceiling Mural, Enso Hotel, San Francisco, CA
2021 Airstream Interior Mural, Mobile Salon, CA
2021 Interior Wall Mural, Residential, Seattle, WA
2020 Interior Wall Mural, Enso Float, Portland, OR
2020 Temporary Exterior Wall Mural, Communion, Portland, OR
2019 Interior Wall Mural, Residential, Portland, OR
2019 Interior Wall Mural, Kenton Hotel, Portland, OR
2018 Interior Wall Mural, Honeymoon Tattoo, Portland, OR
PUBLICATIONS
2023 Issue 6 New Visionary Magazine, Visionary Art Collective
2023 Spring Exhibition Catalog, Printed and Virtual, I Like Your Work Podcast
2023 Suboart Magazine March 2023 #2, Printed and Virtual, Suboart
2022 Water Briefed Exhibition Review, Variable West
2022 “Water Briefed,” Printed Book, Regional Arts and Culture Council Grant
2015 “The Edge,” Online Magazine, The Gravity of the Thing