Emily Pyle

Emily Pyle is a UK-based multidisciplinary artist whose current practice centres on painting clowns, jesters, and fools. For several years, she has been embedded in an online clown community on Instagram, using it as both source and site of exchange. Each portrait is approached as a collaboration between artist and subject, reimagining the individual’s self-fashioned persona through a bold, impressionistic lens.

Working primarily in acrylic, Pyle’s paintings scrutinise performance, self-expression, and chosen identity. Her work is driven by energetic mark-making and volatile colour, animating these figures with both humour and unease. The resulting portraits sit somewhere between play and exposure, using the language of the fool to probe how people present themselves - and what slips through the act.