Emily Ponsonby is primarily known for her beeswax work which builds upon the Ancient Egyptians’ Encaustic process – buffing and scraping pigment into layers of wax. At the foundation of every painting, etchings and monotypes echo a similar technique, paving a way for decisions on colour and composition until the desired forms gently emerge.

The rawness and malleability of her materials are in harmony with the bodies she depicts amongst the swollen, unspooling lanes and gnarly shores of the South West.

Ponsonby’s painting ‘Chewing The Cud’, is being exhibited until late October at the National Portrait Gallery as part of the new Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award, previously the BP Portrait Award. 

Emily trained first at City & Guilds in London before studying for three years at Leith School of Art in Edinburgh and a year at The Royal Drawing School - which she still attends in the dungeons of the print room.