Emma Labattaglia.

Emma Labattaglia is a contemporary artist with a background in Fine Arts painting, having completed her studies in Melbourne, Australia, and Italy. Her work is deeply rooted in heritage—layered in memory, tradition, and personal history. From a young age, she watched her Opa paint in his backyard studio, absorbed in his creative world, shaping her earliest connection to art. His influence remains embedded in her process, where each brushstroke carries echoes of the past.

“Collage plays a central role in my practice—fragments of canvas layered upon canvas, torn edges and overlapping textures building a sense of history within each piece. These surfaces evolve instinctively, embracing imperfection as layers are applied, scraped back, and rebuilt. The physicality of this process mirrors memory itself—some moments standing boldly, others buried beneath but always present.

My work leans into abstraction, allowing colour, form, and texture to speak where words cannot. Thick oil paint moves with weight and urgency, shaping surfaces that feel weathered, lived-in, and deeply human. Beneath it all, delicate pastel lines emerge—a fleeting contrast to the density, like whispers of ancestry threading through the composition. Tulips, recurring in my work, serve as symbols of lineage—petal upon petal, story upon story, unfolding across time.

Through these layered canvases, colour, and texture, I explore the beauty found in imperfection—the unpolished, the raw, the unexpected. Each painting becomes a conversation between past and present, memory and reinvention, tradition and transformation.”

Words by Emma Labattaglia