EMILY WHITING FINE ART

from Charleston Style & Design Summer 2023

KATHARINE FLANDERS

EMILY Whiting has had a lifelong love affair with art. After graduation, the Clemson University alumna did not use the bachelor’s degree she had earned after years of study, but instead did something less “practical” and more passionate: She poured herself into pottery, clay sculpture and making handcarved and glazed tiles of Celtic and medieval themes. Her talents led first to a pottery business and then a tile business, during which time she taught art and pottery classes. Whiting’s work was presented at art fairs in Greenville, South Carolina, and shown in galleries in Greenville and Asheville, North Carolina.

Circumstances led her to change her focus, and she eventually replaced the clay under her fingernails with oil paint stains on her fingertips as she became a painter as prolific as she had been as a sculptor. Whiting’s body of work is based in realism, with subjects ranging from sea life and landscapes to portraits and literary scenes. Like any artist, she has her favorites.

“I love painting brick or stone ruins being overtaken by nature, showing the passage of time,” she says.

Whiting paints from her home studio in Adams Run, South Carolina. She is a member of the Oil Painters of America and Edisto Art Guild, and her work is represented at Stono Gallery.