EMMA MCINTYRE

Early Years

Emma McIntyre was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1990. She graduated from the Auckland University of Technology in 2011 and then completed an MFA at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, in 2016. This was followed by a second MFA at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, in 2021. In 2019, McIntyre received a Fulbright Graduate Award. She relocated to Los Angeles in 2019, where she continues to live and work. McIntyre is a founding board member of the cooperative gallery Coastal Signs in Auckland.

Emma McIntyre Artworks

McIntyre’s contemporary art practice is defined by vivid abstractions that explore the material and alchemical possibilities of painting. Her artworks are instinctual yet deeply considered, often combining oils and unconventional substances such as iron oxide. Drawing on a repertoire of motifs and compositional strategies from art history, she synthesises poured colour, brushed forms, and calligraphic marks into a distinctive, dynamic visual language.

Jonathan Griffin, writing for Ocula, highlights McIntyre’s process: ‘I like the line that goes towards writing, because it’s leading you part of the way there, but not taking you all the way’. This sense of partial revelation is key to the work’s allure, as the viewer is invited to move between recognition and abstraction, surface and depth.

Key Developments and Seminal Artworks

Up bubbles her amorous breath (2021)

Up bubbles her amorous breath (2021) is a landmark painting in Emma McIntyre’s practice, achieving a record price at auction. The work exemplifies McIntyre’s approach to contemporary art, blending gestural abstraction with layered art historical references. Critics have noted the painting’s vibrant, atmospheric palette and its sense of movement, which evoke both the physical act of painting and the fleeting nature of perception. As Megan Macnaughton observed in Contemporary Hum, McIntyre’s paintings ‘draw on art historical legacies of abstraction and expressionism, layering the works with bodily gestures that invite multiple temporalities and readings, at once historical and contemporary, frenzied and contemplative’. The title itself, poetic and evocative, hints at McIntyre’s ongoing interest in the intersection of language and image, as well as her engagement with the tradition of titling paintings in a way that opens up multiple interpretive possibilities.

If there is light that has weight (2021)

If there is light that has weight (2021) is another seminal artwork, notable for its complex layering of poured colour and gestural marks. The painting was described in Frieze as McIntyre’s ‘Bonnard’, referencing the French painter’s luminous palettes and intimate, atmospheric spaces. The work’s interplay of transparency and opacity, along with its subtle references to landscape and weather systems, exemplifies McIntyre’s alchemical approach to painting, in which materials are allowed to interact unpredictably. As McIntyre explained to Jonathan Griffin, ‘With iron oxide, for instance, the transformation when you add the rusting catalyst is into something glowing and alive. With paint, it feels like you’re working through stages where it’s like mud, and then you’re turning it back into something meaningful’.

Fuses (2020)

Fuses (2020) pays direct homage to Carolee Schneemann’s groundbreaking 1967 video work of the same name, a foundational piece in feminist art history. McIntyre’s painting, like Schneemann’s film, explores the intersection of bodily gesture and material process. As Frieze describes, ‘Schneemann variously cut, painted, erased and abraded the film to combine the energies of the body with the materiality of the celluloid. The same could be said of McIntyre’s work, in which the dissolving and recombining of forms and collisions of transparencies and densities are constantly at play’. In Fuses, McIntyre uses poured paint and expressive mark-making to create a palimpsest of forms, evoking both the presence of the body and the act of painting itself.

Fierce Jewels (2020)

Fierce Jewels (2020) is a smaller, lapidary canvas that has drawn comparisons to Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (1872), a painting often credited with launching the Impressionist movement. In Frieze, the work is described as “a drenched miasma of pale teal and pink; a single dot of vermilion punctuates the skyline. This daub is the sun, a celestial ember burning through the atmosphere, but also a point of pure abstraction”. The painting’s delicate interplay of colour and light, along with its suggestive title, exemplifies McIntyre’s ability to balance art historical allusion with contemporary abstraction.

Awards and Accolades

• Fulbright Graduate Award, 2019
• University of Auckland Research Masters Scholarship, 2016
• Auckland Print Studio Residency, 2017

Exhibitions

Emma McIntyre has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions internationally.

Solo Exhibitions

• Among my swan, David Zwirner, Hong Kong (2025)
• Objects or Vapours, Coastal Signs, Auckland (2024)
• Pearl Diver, Château Shatto, Los Angeles (2023)
• An echo, a stain, David Zwirner, New York (2023)
• Madonna of the Pomegranate, Coastal Signs, Auckland (2022)
• Up bubbles her amorous breath, Air de Paris, Romainville (2022)
• Heat, Mossman Gallery, Wellington (2020)

Website and Instagram

Emma McIntyre’s Instagram is @emma._._mcintyre.

Emma McIntyre FAQs

Ocula | 2025