Collection: Emily Cowan

Emily Cowan is a self-taught painter working primarily in acrylic gouache. Her work centers on houses, apartments, and domestic interiors, using architectural forms and meticulous detail work to explore themes of personal narrative, feminism, and the emotional weight and global injustice of the housing crisis. Rooted in personal longing and social critique, her paintings are both homage and protest—depicting homes she admires but will never be able to own.  Every building she paints is a real building somewhere, based on her own photography.  After years exploring illustration, comics, photography and collage, she began painting in 2021 and has since exhibited in galleries and artist-run spaces across Vancouver and the BC Lower Mainland.