What was left behind

Canopy Collections is delighted to present 'What was left behind', an exhibition of new paintings by Emerson Pullman. This will be the artist’s first solo show at Canopy Collections HQ. Pullman’s figurative paintings exist in the space between realism and abstraction. The depiction of a figure in a scene is used as a framework through which the artist explores themes of time, memory, introspection and mortality. His subjects are often depicted turning away from the viewer, creating a certain distance between the image and its audience and leaving space for contemplation and reflection. Pullman plays with the mechanics of painting, constructing his works through gestural layers of transparent paint, leaving areas of the canvas unpainted and images not entirely resolved.

In 'What was left behind', Pullman presents a new body of paintings that orbit the unstable ground between memory and presence. Nothing stays unchanged in life; time moves through us, altering the shape of who we are, leaving behind fragments – traces of what was, echoes of what still lingers. In these paintings the idea of the self is in motion, caught between presence and absence, form and dissolution. Faces emerge and recede, bodies take shape only to blur at the edges, as if memory and reality are negotiating space on the canvas.

This body of work is a reflection on transformation, on what is lost, what remains, and what continues to evolve. Pullman’s painting process itself mirrors this; layers of paint build and erode, decisions are made and undone, surfaces shift in and out of focus. Some marks stay, others disappear, each choice leaving its imprint on the canvas.

Drawing on the domestic intimacy of Vuillard and the dissolving light of Bonnard, Pullman plays with the structures of interior and exterior – latticework, chairs, chandeliers and framed artworks – that tether his figures to time and place. Yet these spaces never quite settle. Like memory, they flicker. A subject may sit posed, but we are not offered the comfort of permanence. Instead, we are invited to linger in what remains: the gestures, colours and atmosphere.

To look back is not to dwell, but to understand how we carry the past within us; not as something fixed, but as something that moves forward with us.