Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer: From Ballet to Art — Exclusive Interview on Her 'The Scapegoat' Exhibition

So, basically, these are paintings I’ve been working on over the last two to three years. I think you’re aware that I moved back to Italy about four years ago after living in New York, and that really marked the beginning of my deeper dedication to my practice. While I was living in New York, I was mostly focused on work. But when I suddenly found myself in rural Tuscany, with much more time and space, I really started looking around me and reflecting on what inspired me most. I began creating a series of works that explored religion and the centuries-old traditions and religious aesthetics in Italy—Roman Catholicism and so on. This led me to rediscover a painting that I had fallen in love with about ten years ago, The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt. I had always admired this painting, and I thought I appreciated it simply for its aesthetic qualities. But when I revisited it, I realized it touched on many of the themes I had begun to explore in my own work. I became really curious about the story behind it.

I learned that it’s based on a passage from the Old Testament, and I always wanted to understand what the term scapegoat really meant. Essentially, it’s a goat that a community would choose to transfer all their sickness, suffering, shame, sins, and negativity onto. They would metaphorically "impregnate" the goat with all this burden and then send it out to die alone in the wilderness. I was so moved by this story and by the painting that I began exploring other historical art references. That’s how this entire body of work came to life.

The village I live in has only 40 inhabitants, and you can't even fit cars through the roads because it's a medieval village with narrow streets. We have this tiny little church where we only have mass on Christmas and Easter, but it’s so beautiful. There's a wonderful little altar with a sculpture, and I just love that church. So, I did a small painting inside of it.

I started working on them at the beginning of my master's degree. I did a master's in fine art at Central Saint Martins in London. It was a sort of low-residency program, so I was living in Italy and would travel to London two or three times a year for a couple of weeks. It was such a period of fervent discovery. I was reading a lot and really reflecting on my surroundings. It was such a shock, all of a sudden, being in Italy, where there's so much silence and beauty. I live in quite a remote area, and I have my boyfriend, whom I met here, and we live together with our two dogs. It's a very different pace of life, with a lot of isolation, which really feeds my work. My studio practice is really about being in nature, surrounded by silence, nature, landscape, and classical music. That’s how I live my life every day.

Yeah, she used to always draw. My father put together an exhibition in Shanghai, and in that exhibition, there are several really beautiful hand-drawn pieces she made when she was younger. She was so talented. But I’ve always drawn and painted as far back as I can remember. I used to take classes after school, even when I was little. I was also a ballet dancer, and for a long period, I thought I was going to become a professional dancer. Then, when I was about 15 or 16, I made a decision that I really wanted to be an artist and knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life. It’s just taken some time, you know. I wasn’t one of those artists who had everything figured out at 20. I spent four years in a very intensive academic school for drawing and painting in Florence—really focused on studying the Old Masters and various painting techniques from life. But even after that, I still didn’t fully understand what my work was about or what I was truly inspired by. I graduated knowing how to draw and paint, but I didn’t yet know how to translate that into creating work that felt like my own. So, it’s taken me about ten years to really figure out how to do that.

It’s an amazing experience, especially because all I’ve ever wanted in life is to be a career artist and to have that be my profession. I’ve always painted, even when I was living in New York. It just wasn’t my job or my life at that point. I remember feeling a lot of envy for the artists we represented at the gallery because they were career artists. It’s so easy to say, “All I want is to have a solo exhibition,” but then you do that, and the next goal immediately appears. So, it’s important to remind myself of how far I’ve come since then.

This feels like the very beginning for me. I hope to have the opportunity to show my work in Europe—that would be wonderful. One of the best parts of the New York experience was having people from various stages of my life come to support me. They really showed up, and that was so meaningful. I also have so many people in Europe, and it would be amazing to share that experience with them too. But beyond that, I paint every day, so I’m constantly creating new work. I hope to continue to have the chance to show it and to keep dedicating my life to that.

In Italy, one hundred percent. Yeah. You know, I really missed Italy when I was living in New York. I feel so much more in touch with myself when I’m here. It’s the Renaissance, it’s all this amazing beauty—everything that really feeds me as an artist. I just feel so much better when I’m living here. I feel like I’m connected to this wellspring of inspiration.

When people ask me that question, I always say it’s a work in progress, because I’m still discovering what it means to be her granddaughter, and what she meant to others—what she really signified. As I get older, I understand the importance of that in different ways, for different people. It changes over time. And I’m discovering her in new ways all the time, through the people who love and admire her. That’s how I get to know her: through the love that others have for her. It’s incredible to see how that admiration spans the globe—from the United States to Spain, China, the Philippines... I’ve had the chance to travel a lot because of this part of my life. She’s loved everywhere. It’s amazing.

I grew up being very exposed to various sort of efforts that my dad would organize, and it just became it was very sort of second nature. I feel like it's a responsibility that I have. As I said before, the more I learn about her and the more I understand about her life, the more I understand on a personal level what that meant to her. And that notion of legacy is important to carry on and it's meaningful. And I think that we owe that to her. So, for me it's sort of evolved the way, and I hope it continues to evolve the different ways that I can have a relationship with UNICEF. And I hope that one day my artistic voice can help in those regards and that I can continue to personalize that experience.

It's never over. I still sort of do-little things here and there, but it's not what defines me. You know, it can't be what defines me. And that's not really enough for me. But it's still there. Even when I go to events and stuff and represent my grandmother and I'm with my family, it's sort of all connected in a way to that.