Learning the land.
Listening closely.

I am Emily McLatchie, a Fine Art graduate from Aberdeen’s Gray’s School of Art (2025).  I am an early career multidisciplinary artist and community arts practitioner with experience in cultural research, heritage interpretation, festival production and collaborative public engagement. My practice explores relationships between landscape, material histories and the cycles of life through painting, photography and sound.

Working with earth pigments invites a meditative attention to time, touch, and care, allowing emotion and material to develop together. Through repeated journeys along coastlines, forests and riverbanks, I gather materials and observe the subtle traces left by weathering, erosion and natural decay. These encounters shape both the physical substance of my paintings and the ideas they explore.

In this act of learning the land, from trodding along beach trails and rummaging deeper into the orange glow of Scots pine trees - I have been learning peace through healing, processing and understanding loss, a familiar cycle the Earth knows well. In her palm lies grief, change, and continuity all at once, offering a way to understand memento mori not as an ending, but a return to the natural order of life.

Among the leaves, the wind, through the sparkling granite city of Aberdeen, and the heron witnessing patiently in the rush of the river Nith's embrace, I have found an earthly bit of company treading softly beside me. A quiet presence has emerged amongst the landscape of rich offerings... whether the remnants of a bone, a withered stick or worn stone.

​Rather than presenting death as an end, my work considers it as part of an ongoing cycle of transformation, where loss, renewal and continuity exist together. By allowing the land to become both subject and medium, I seek to create paintings that speak to our enduring relationship with place and the rhythms that connect all living things.

Alongside my studio practice, I have developed a growing body of work in community engagement, cultural research and collaborative public art. Leading earth pigment workshops, after-school art clubs and creative learning programmes that encourage confidence, curiosity and shared making across different age groups. As Associate Producer with Big Burns Supper's Northern Lights Festival, I contributed to heritage research, artist development and collaborative public artworks. My work included interviewing historians, museum professionals and community stakeholders, researching the history of the Robert Burns Mausoleum, evaluating artists for future festival programming, and developing installations that translated archival research and oral histories into immersive public experiences.

In 2026, I worked as Community Artist with Nithraid River Festival, designing and leading participatory workshops exploring the River Nith through ecology, local heritage and environmental awareness. Working in partnership with EcoArt and working alongside ecologist Malcolm Haddow, I led the creation of a collaborative community banner inspired by historic trade union banners, celebrating the rights of the river, local biodiversity and our shared responsibility to care for the landscapes we inhabit.

Across all aspects of my practice, I am interested in creating spaces where art becomes a way of listening, learning and bringing people together. Whether working with natural materials, historical archives or local communities, my work is rooted in collaboration, sustainability and a deep connection to place.