EMILIA KUN

Photography, textile design

705-835-2002
emiliakun@ptpbroadband.com

Completed my formal education in arts at the Academy of Visual Arts “Ion Andreescu” in Cluj-Napoca Romania, specializing in textiles and design.

Spent several years in the commercial pursuit of textile design in Romania, Israel and now continuing this as a career in Canada. Experienced with various artistic mediums such as painting, drawing, printmaking and photography. I gravitated towards textile arts and surface design because I found this medium to bring together several differing and at times overlapping elements in creating visual images.

By using textiles, the flat painterly surface instead of merely creating an illusion of dimensionality became one of physically moving into 3 dimensions as well as maintaining some of its painterly character, thereby giving more life to the image. This 3 dimensionality allowed me a greater freedom of expression of my visual creativity and enlarged the possibilities of experimenting with several mixed media within the textile arts.

The inspiration for a great part of my designs, stems mostly from a deep interest in forms, textures, colors and the ever changing and evolving realities of life and nature.

In parallel with my textile design I have developed a serious interest in pursuing photography and digital imaging, finding this medium to be both complementary and independent with my textile work, and I often use the captured images worked into the designs. With the advancement in digital format imaging I found that it opened up a whole new element in my creativity. In that now I can, after capturing the original image, further manipulate and experiment with multi layered imaging.

However, taken on its own, photography in its unaltered form, whether using film or digital media, captures the essence of the image and the importance of its spontaneity and purity remains an important part of my visual creativity. Complementary to my artistically creative endeavours I am involved in the commercial world as a costume, surface and textile designer on a contractual basis to several South Eastern Ontario companies and in the past as a designer for Gottex in Israel.