Noun

Friday, August 1st - Saturday, August 23rd 2025
Emily O'Reilly

Noun
[noun] grammer
: people, places, things

My current work is centered around the concept of the noun—the people, places, and things that anchor our experiences and shape our understanding of the world. Through painting and printmaking, I explore how everyday subjects carry emotional, cultural, and symbolic weight.

Each figure, landscape, or object I depict invites reflection on presence and absence, memory and identity. Whether capturing a quiet door or a peaceful slumber, I aim to give visual form to the often overlooked moments that define our everyday life.

By working across different media, I engage with both immediacy and permanence—seeking a balance between spontaneity and structure, narrative and abstraction. My practice is a study of the tangible world and its quiet poetry, framed through the lens of the simplest yet most meaningful elements of language: nouns. 

A recurring subject in my work is motherhood—not only as a personal experience but as a lens through which to view care, labor, intimacy, and transformation. Becoming a mother has changed my life, and the lens I use to see the world.