Emma Coyle has been working with the visual vocabulary of Pop Art for over two decades, but she isn’t trying to re-create its golden era. Originally from Ireland and living in London since 2006, Coyle takes what she needs from that mid-century aesthetic—the color, the edge, the tension—and steers it into a space shaped by contemporary media and her own sensibility. She’s not playing by old rules. Her paintings are pulled from the now, stripped from today’s advertising culture and reassembled into something more personal, more current.
In 2022, her solo show The Best Revenge at Helwaser Gallery in New York drew wide attention. It was ranked 12th in GalleriesNow’s list of the most popular exhibitions at the time. That kind of recognition hasn’t made her work more predictable. If anything, it’s pushed her further into experimentation—breaking from habits, keeping her paintings fresh, and refusing to circle back on old ground.
25.01 (2025)
Coyle’s painting 25.01 stands tall—96 inches high by 36 inches wide. It’s the largest piece she’s made so far, but scale alone isn’t what makes it impactful. The composition throws you off. The figure doesn’t sit at the center; it’s nudged to one side, shifting the whole energy of the canvas. That imbalance is intentional. She wants the painting to feel like it’s leaning, shifting, unsettled.
While 25.01 has clear Pop influences—vivid acrylic colors, clean edges, a bold silhouette—it isn’t trying to be retro. Coyle has no interest in creating nostalgia. Instead, she starts from scratch each time, often working from magazine or print media images that catch her eye—not because of the product they advertise, but because of the form, the framing, or the feel of the pose. She uses those fragments as a base and then lets her painting pull in new directions.
There’s no repeat formula here. Coyle works with intention but also with flexibility, testing how scale, color, and composition can do something new—even within familiar aesthetics.
The Slice and Big Mouth
The year 2025 opened with The Slice, a 48×60 inch acrylic piece that shares some of 25.01’s tension. The figure again sits off-center, inviting movement and a bit of visual friction. You get the sense that the image is mid-thought—there’s something behind it, but it stays just out of reach. Coyle lets the story breathe rather than tell it outright.
Shortly after came Big Mouth, which mirrors The Slice in size (but rotated to 60×48 inches) and tone. Both paintings carry a lively, almost youthful energy. They aren’t loud in the traditional Pop Art sense, but they have presence. They buzz.
Coyle explains that she’s always pushing herself to avoid recycling imagery. Even if a composition echoes something she’s done before, she shifts it—new colors, new mood, new line quality. Her source material is always changing, too. She keeps an eye on current commercial design and pulls elements that resonate visually. In her hands, these parts lose their original purpose. They become tools for constructing something else entirely.
Her brushwork is deliberate, but not overly refined. She embraces contrast—thick lines meet softer fields of color, and negative space holds its own. These aren’t overly polished surfaces. They’re meant to hold tension, to catch the eye without over-explaining.
Always Shifting
Coyle’s process is rooted in avoiding repetition. She’s very aware of how easy it would be to coast—to ride on recognizable themes or previous successes. So she doesn’t. Each new work begins from a place of risk: a new layout, a new palette, a different kind of image. She moves forward by staying uncomfortable.
Color plays a big role. She still uses the bright tones that hint at Pop’s history, but she controls them more tightly now. Sometimes she pulls back, leaving space for softer transitions or emptier zones. Sometimes she doubles down, crowding the canvas with saturated contrast. But she never does it for shock value. Everything is balanced against the overall rhythm of the work.
Looking Ahead
Emma Coyle’s work doesn’t dwell in the past. It nods to it, yes, but it’s more interested in what’s happening now—in the visual overload of modern life, in the flattened world of advertising, and in how form alone can say something. Her paintings ask viewers to pause, to rethink what they’re looking at, and to recognize the pieces without needing to decode them.
Whether it’s 25.01, The Slice, or Big Mouth, each canvas pulls together familiarity and friction. That push-pull is the engine behind her work. Coyle’s not out to please. She’s out to build—and rebuild—on her own terms.
