“Just because I cannot see it, doesn’t mean I can’t believe it,” says Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas. For an artist, such a mantra should sound familiar. The arts have historically been a place where artists can pursue imagination freely and with as much conviction as they want. Emma Overman is one such artist. In her paintings, she unquestioningly engages her whimsical fantasies: where forest fairies sway, men with pumpkin heads dance, and grinning bats take flight in the darkness. Her newest exhibition, Spooky! is on display in the Speck Gallery this month, just in time for the Halloween season.

*Blood Moon*
acrylic on wood
42 5/8” x 49 1/8”

Overman is an oil painter known for characters created in her signature style, i.e., wide faces, no visible mouths, large eyes. These attributes, among others, make her work easily recognizable. When discussing an Emma Overman piece, it is difficult to avoid words like “ethereal” or “fantastical.” Indeed, Overman’s characters often resemble playful illustrations one may see on the cover of a book of fairytales.

*Ghost Story*
acrylic on wood
37 1/4” x 43 1/4”

These are not simple storybook illustrations, though. Overman frames each painting dramatically – often in decadent, baroque frames. Some pieces are large-scale, and the application of paint is always skillful, detailed, and carefully applied — normally to wooden canvas (a choice that brings a certain organic feel to each piece). The physical presence of these works gives them a far more formidable and sometimes even menacing quality that is different from how we typically see storybook-style artwork. In short– Overman’s pieces carry an impact.

*Hocus Pocus!*
acrylic on wood
20 1/2” x 25 3/4”

There are whispers of nordic folklore in these pieces. In An Autumn Chill, we see an elven or fairy-like figure standing in front of a group of forest creatures, her head a mass of knotted tree branches. The world we see in this scene is one that teeters between the natural and the spiritual. By nodding towards an ancient tradition of fairytales, Overman provides depth to these pieces, and stirs up a curiosity in the viewer to explore the mythology at play.

*An Autumn Chill*
acrylic on wood
49” x 63”

As “spooky” as this show may be, the pieces have an undercurrent of warmth. Overman’s paintings of black cats are one example. They are humorous and lighthearted – mimicking the victorian era tradition of framing portraits in oval “bubble frames.” Here and throughout the exhibit, she embraces a child-like quality of elevating the small and precious, similar to how a child may be asked to create a drawing of their family members and proceed to sketch their beloved pets.

*Fraidy*
acrylic on wood
11 3/4” x 10 1/2”

Horror as a genre relies upon the unknown: unknown monsters, unknown places, and unknown circumstances. It is clouded in uncertainty, and for the average person, uncertainty itself is scary. For Emma Overman, the uncertain and creepy are just elements of a rich internal world. Spooky! may be macabre, but it is, even more so, completely delightful. As Emma Overman shows us here, fear and delight aren’t such opposites anyway; maybe they can even be friends.

Grover & Mary Ann
acrylic on wood
17 1/4” x 12 1/2”

Spooky! will be on display in the Speck Gallery throughout the month of October.