That painting that Emma Harvey has in the latest Mixtape exhibition is one of a recent number of relatively larger canvas pieces she has been quietly working on as 2023 kicks in, here’s a shot of it in her studio. i rather like this latest development. Personally I don’t think you can appreciate the size and the life that is in that painting when it is presented as a flat cropped image as it is in the Mixtape show so I asked her if this shot could be shown here. I know Emma is a big part of Cultivate, and yes, this is another case of us blowing our own trumpets here but she has nothing to do with this particular post and I think, without making a big noise about it, she is one of the more exciting painters around at the moment, someone who should be getting far more attention that she does. Of course Emma didn’t go to the right art school so the gatekeepers both old and new don’t have her on their (very) limited rather selective horizons (I do recall one artist/curator getting very excited about her work and wanting to feature her until as an almost after-thought he asked her in an e.mail which art school she went to, he didn’t get the answer he wanted and she never heard from him again. Emma Harvey has been consistently producing exciting work for the last ten or so years, her Riot Grrrl flavours and her defiant feminist attitudes to the front, her paintings, her prints and her ambition are to be embraced.  Yes, Emma co-curated these Mixtape shows and has co-run Cultivate from te start, she’ll probably not thank me for saying all this this morning, but, as some of you know, I’ve never been one to keep my big mouth closed when it comes to art or artists, she’ll want this post taken down and well, for a number of reasons I don’t think it should be. I love this painting. and I love this photograph of it far more than the image of it in the Mixtape show, art excites, artists excite.  (sw)