Val Emmerson is a British artist based in Grassington, North Yorkshire. Before pursuing her creative work more fully, Val worked for over twenty years as a nurse and midwife, while her interest in textiles developed alongside this. She later ran a small weaving workshop, and that early connection to fabric, texture and pattern continues to influence the way she paints today.

Today Val mainly paints, although her textile background is still very present in the way she works. She enjoys experimenting with collage, stitching, stapling and layered surfaces, often creating richly textured grounds before adding paint. She even uses her great grandmother’s old hand sewing machine as part of this process.

Her paintings are inspired by the things she notices around her, from fleeting landscape patterns seen while travelling by train or plane, to old textiles, memories and flowers returning in the garden each year. Colour, texture and mark making are central to her work, giving each painting an expressive and spontaneous quality.

Val describes her work as a way of “putting little bits of life together”, bringing fragments of memory, place and everyday observation into each piece.