Contributed by Sharon Butler / In April, Two Coats of Paint welcomes resident artist Dale Emmart. Her work reflects a sustained and expansive meditation on rope — in oil, ink on washi, woodcut, and artist books. For her, it is a widely evocative pictorial object owing to its sheer versatility. Essentially unchanged since the Egyptians first documented ropemaking in 4000 BCE, it admits of a remarkable range of associations: industriousness and energy, lethargy and repose, entanglement and freedom.
The multi-twisted form has attracted artists for centuries – from trompe-l’œil painters in the 1700s, chroniclers of the Wild West, and artists in seafaring communities enshrining tall ships and maritime commerce. Rembrandt used it to show human effort and Miró made it a central element mimicking surrounding human figures. In Marsden Hartley’s Knotting Rope (1939–40), it showcases a working man’s hands manipulating a thick rope. As Emmart has observed, rope functions as passive infrastructure as well as a means of active control. Strands of it are used to bind, secure, suspend, and restrain. And the coil, the knot, the loop, the snag, and the frayed end are all part of her visual vocabulary.
Emmart has used rope to explore “the atmosphere of the historical and eternal under environmental and political pressure.” What distinguishes her current work is its apparent practical neutrality. Observation seems to subordinate empirical content. Historical links to labor and lynching, among other things, are submerged. Rope isn’t overtly depicted as an implement of control. Emmart leaves the ropes without a defined function, though the ambiguity is part of the point. As the different types of ropes blur and intertwine, something figurative emerges — small dramas about the human condition.
Dale Emmart Two Coats of Paint Artist Residency, 22-19 41st Avenue, 6th Floor, Studio #10, Long Island City, NY. April 12–17, 2026. Open Studio: Wednesday, April 15, 5–7 pm. For more info or to schedule a visit, email STAFF@twocoatsofpaint.com with STUDIO VISIT in the subject. Follow Dale on Instagram @de2msart.
Upcoming shows:
Caldwell University, January 2027
The Painting Center, April 2027
Studio playlist: “I listen to recorded books and the news on NPR and The Bulwark.”
About the author: Sharon Butler is a painter, publisher of Two Coats of Paint, and director of the Two Coats of Paint Residency Program.
