Emmy Hastings

I’ve discovered that one of my life's passions is my hometown. It’s ironic since I haven’t lived in Kingston since I was 18 years old and sometimes forget which streets are one-way. My other lifelong passion is painting and within the past 9 years I have been painting Kingston and more recently, New Paltz, my current home.

These artworks are born of a large collection of scenes through my childhood eyes and I have returned to these places to take photos, using interesting angles and lighting situations. While interpreting these scenes, I am sometimes surprised by something else that catches me off guard.  It may be a luminous water tower on a roof. It may be a reflection in a restaurant window of an amazing early 20th century building – things that I never really saw before I started painting them. I am discovering or rediscovering these vignettes and using oils and acrylics to embody them. One of my intentions is for people to see these streets through new eyes.