Emerlye Arts

Cynthia Emerlye is a Vermont artist.  Her work features elegant, rich, detailed floral designs and illustrations which have been compared to an updated William Morris. In addition to oil paintings and clayboard engravings, she has designed and printed three collections of greeting cards which are sold in upscale gift shops throughout the region.  She also creates complex mandalas and floral designs for adults who like to color and has published a coloring journal, two coloring books, and multiple portfolio sets of coloring pages.  

Once a week, Cynthia teaches an art therapy group for a psychiatric facility in Vermont.  She has taught workshops for the Vermont Association of Art Teachers, the Fletcher Farm School for Arts & crafts, and Artistree Art Center.  Her classes and workshops are in kirigami papercutting and scratchboard techniques.

Cynthia works mainly in oil paintings and detailed clayboard engravings and scratchboard and her work is largely floral in design.  She begins with real flowers and vegetation and alters them to create fantasy flowers in a loose, tangled bunch, usually wound together with ribbon or string.  This tangled floral mass and ribbon is deeply emblematic of what she sees as her life - a web of beautiful endeavours always on the verge of falling apart.