Emil Sands b. 1998

Overview
Emil Sands, Tide pool crab land, 2024
Emil Sands, Tide pool crab land, 2024
"One of the things that I find so compelling about your paintings is they have such serenity about them, but there’s always a degree of drama as well." —Eleanor Nairne in interview with the artist, 2025
Emil Sands constructs his compositions from the perspective of an outsider—one who may be welcomed, but whose invitation is not guaranteed. Drawing on his experience of living with cerebral palsy, the artist reflects on the ways that a limitation in one’s physical movement can impose the role of observer. His work argues for painting’s ability to positively exploit this imposition and invokes its capacity to revise strained personal memories of the outdoors with a charged sense of freedom. 
Biography
Photo: Charlie Rubin
Photo: Charlie Rubin

The figures in Emil Sands' paintings often exchange lonely glances along shallow waters and deep blue skies. Warm bodies pass through a liminal space between day and night, moving through states of masculinity and vulnerability. His personal essay "Struck on one Side," which focused on his experience growing up with cerebral palsy, was published in the March 2023 edition of The Atlantic magazine, along with his paintings. He is currently working on extending the piece into a memoir to be published by Picador in the UK and Scribner in the US. Emil Sands attended Central St. Martins for a Fine Art Painting foundation in 2017 and the University of Cambridge from 2018 until 2022, where he read Classics for his BA and studied for an MPhil in Ancient Art. In 2022, he was then awarded the Henry Fellowship to study Fine Art and Creative Writing at Yale's School of Art and Writing School respectively.

 

Recent exhibitions: Encounters, curated by Georgina Pounds, JO-HS, Mexico City (MX); Emil Sands - We Are Not In Hell, Tibor De Nagy, New York, NY (US); Crypt Gallery, London (UK); and Mostyn Gallery, Wales (UK).

 

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