EMILY MAY ROSE

We recently sat down with Emily May Rose (the artist behind Toronto’s favourite graffiti-tagging raccoons and owner of Northern Contemporary Art Gallery) to chat about being an artist, what inspires her and more.

Who are you? What do you do?

My name is Emily May Rose, and I am an artist.

How do you express your creativity?

I express my creativity in many ways. I create paintings, sculptures, animations. I paint murals. I design apparel. I illustrate for clients. I’m always doing something different.

Describe your art form — do you have a signature style or technique?

My work is very graphic kind of cartoony. I like to use mediums that can appear very flat and clean but still hand-painted so you can still see the little human imperfections and I like that.

My signature is my raccoons. I just think raccoons are funny. They’re always up to no good. I like making art that makes people smile and laugh.

What inspires you?

I’m inspired by cities and the wildlife that lives there, so I like taking those scenarios and exaggerating them and making up new narratives. Like, “those raccoons are always up to no good but maybe it was them that stole your bike or maybe it was them that tagged the laneway.”

How long have you been creating?

How did you get your start?

I’ve been creating art my whole life. I can’t think of a time that I wasn’t. I’ve been creating professionally for about eight or nine years now.

If you weren’t creating art, where would you be?

What would you be doing?

If I wasn’t creating art, I don’t know what I’d be doing. I can’t even picture myself doing anything else. I used to want to be a movie star or an astronaut, so maybe that.

What

does creativity mean to you?

To me, creativity is thinking outside the box. It doesn’t have to be painting or making art. It can just be your approach to things. Seeing things differently and doing things differently.

Emily May Rose is an award-winning artist and illustrator based in Toronto, Ontario. Based on her own experiences, Emily’s work features a cast of recurring characters (most notably her weed-smoking, pizza-eating raccoons) to depict humorous situations that are relatable to many of us trying to survive in an urban environment.

You can find her murals all over the world, but you don’t have to travel far to see one. As part of our latest Mural Project at Collective Arts Toronto, Emily collaborated with graffiti artist Hungr. See what her posse of raccoons are getting up to while you enjoy a fresh pint and tasty eats.

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