Emily Spooner is a visual artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She holds a BFA in Painting and Drawing from Concordia University (2020) and has since attended artist residencies across Canada and in Iceland. Her work has been presented in various group exhibitions and projects across Québec. At the core of Spooner’s artistic practice is intuitive creation, through which she gives form to the stories and symbols that emerge from both conscious and unconscious levels of understanding. She works primarily in painting, often adorning pieces with sculptural elements created through traditional jewelry- making techniques. She approaches the process of painting as a form of storytelling—layers of imagery and texture build upon each other and interact, shaping the work’s narrative. Though many of these layers remain obscured in the final composition, they are essential to the totality of the painting. Spooner’s imagery is sourced from quick sketchbook drawings and her collection of amateur photographs, including her own family archive and discarded images from flea markets and digital repositories. She intuitively reworks and combines these sources through a process of transformation: images are translated into quick tonal line drawings, selectively cut into stencils, and layered over each other to construct abstracted, interwoven compositions.