Emily Robards is an artist living quietly in the Irish countryside. Her multidisciplinary practice explores relationships between home, nature, embodiment, imagination and the more-than-human world. Rooted in a dialogue between the spiritual and natural, her work often occupies a space between innocence and the uncanny, drawing attention to the fragile and mysterious connections between human, animal and landscape.
Guided by intuition, Robards’ creative process is spontaneous and responsive. Images and forms often emerge through fleeting thoughts, dreams, observation and direct engagement with materials. Working across printmaking, sculpture, drawing, ceramics, and found materials, she lets the process of making become a dialogue between psyche, body, and matter.
Birds and animals recur throughout her work. Through daily care, observation and companionship, they have become both part of her lived environment and significant imaginative presences.
Robards is drawn to materials that carry evidence of time, fragility and change. Her practice embraces accident, imperfection and the unfinished, finding beauty in the broken, weathered and raw. Influenced by the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi, she is interested in the beauty of impermanence and imperfection. Found wood, clay, print and natural materials become active participants in the creative process, their resistance and unpredictability shaping the work as it develops. Her ceramic sculptures are often pit-fired in a hand-dug pit, where smoke, flame, and chance contribute to the clay's transformation.
Her recent work has also explored experiences of altered embodiment and the imaginative possibilities that can emerge through artistic practice. These concerns have developed through her ongoing practice-based research into chronic illness, imagination, birds and the more-than-human world.
Born in County Limerick, Ireland, Robards graduated with honours in Fine Art Printmaking and Contemporary Practice from the Limerick School of Art and Design in 2014. Her work has been exhibited locally and internationally, with pieces acquired by public collections. She is currently completing an MA in Art, Psyche and the Creative Imagination.
“So therefore I dedicate myself, to my art, my sleep, my dreams, my labors, my sufferance's,
My loneliness, my unique madness, my endless absorption and hunger 
Because I cannot dedicate myself to any fellow being.”
-Jack Kerouac