Essie Somma is a multi-disciplinary internationally practicing artist. She is best known for using color and distinct patterning to form narratives around the subjects of her oil paintings. Pulling from the Surrealist and Psychedelic art movements, Somma’s paintings are nostalgia-driven investigations of the relationship between fantasy and reality, illustrated by weaving two and three-dimensional elements together. “I want the stories I create to be so inviting, that viewers feel as though they’ve waded into an ocean the same temperature as the air. So all-encompassing they barely realize they’re submerged.”
Research and cultural narrative are vital to her practice. Her recent project, What Killed the Cat, investigates global philosophical inquiries into metaphysics. Through experimental bookbinding and paper sculpture, she is exploring convergent evolution in thought across spiritual and academic traditions.
Somma has completed residencies at NES Artist Residency, Rimbun Dahan, Huerto Roma Verde, and Space A Nepal, to name a few. She has exhibited across the United States, as well as in Nepal, Iceland, and Malaysia, and was the first non-resident American artist to exhibit at Treasure Hill Artist Village in Taipei. She received her BA in fine art from the University of California Santa Barbara and attended Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London to study art marketing, business, and history.
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