Emmett Paul McLaughlin

Emmett Paul McLaughlin has been an artist all his life. As a child he created elaborate dioramas out of clay that explored the world of his imagination. Drawing constantly, he developed a narrative mode of visual communication that would motivate and define his future movements in Art. 

Through the years he has worked in drawing, painting, sculpture, and printmaking. He earned his BFA in Painting from Boston University, where he studied observational, figurative, anatomical, and formal approaches to Art in conjunction with an extensive Art History curriculum. In 2000 McLaughlin decided to pursue his MFA at American University in Washington D.C. 

For one year in that program, he studied in central Italy, where he experienced, first hand the paintings of the proto-renaissance artists. This era of Art history always intrigued him; here were pioneers in their field attempting to create a space in which to tell a story on a 2-dimensional surface. McLaughlin’s goal has an affinity to the unique pictorial solutions discovered by the 14th century Italians. In his own work, McLaughlin takes the skills of construction and depiction learned through vigorous observational training to bear on the elaboration of a personal pictorial language. 

McLaughlin has received many illustration, portrait, and mural commissions; his commercial and residential murals can be seen in Boston, Pittsburgh, upstate New York, and the Seattle area. Emmett McLaughlin has developed a philosophy on Art and teaching that reaches through observation, towards a focused awareness of individual perception.  

There is a place in Art education where the eye opens outwardly, and inwardly exponentially. By training their vision, students can gain the skills necessary to move according to their inner vision. McLaughlin currently teaches at various Seattle area colleges and looks forward to his future classes as an opportunity to share a belief in observational study as a catalyst for Artistic growth.