Emily Peacock collaborates with her family to create work that examines and celebrates this bond. Familial history and relationships, domesticity, the Texas landscape, and personal loss and tragedy form the foundation of her work. Peacock is also a stand-up comedian who employs humor and self-deprecation as coping mechanisms for tragedy explored across various media, from photography, film, and sculpture to installation. She emphasizes the tension between emotional vulnerability and extroversion through the consistent presence of her body in her photographs, performances, and videos.
During the isolation phase of the pandemic, Peacock was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. When the pandemic gates opened, she "ran out into the world, sometimes tripping over [her] feet." Presently, her work focuses on the profound impact of the pandemic on human connection and technology's role in this division. Recent photographs integrate technology and nature in surreal nighttime scenes, offering an uncanny perspective on our digitally dominated world. All humans experience loss and pain, and from this commonality, Peacock enjoys connecting with people through her art.
In her work, vernacular aspects of life, nature, domestic surroundings, collections, and middle-class minutiae are equally important. Grounded in memoir and regional familiarity, Peacock believes "an ordinary object or place can hold a lot of meaning for one person, but not the next... How does one take an ordinary object or place and give it meaning? I like thinking about this phenomenon, which has become a guiding principle of my creative output."
Peacock is a Houston-based artist; she received her MFA in Photography/Digital Media from the University of Houston and is a Professor of Art at Sam Houston State University. Peacock was a 2013-2014 Lawndale Artist Studio Program participant. In 2016, she received the Houston Arts Alliance Individual Artist Grant; in 2019, the New Faculty Research Grant and has had solo exhibitions at Lawndale Art Center, Houston and the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States, in Vienna, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Peacock’s work is in the permanent collections of the Art Museum of Southeast Texas and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Emily Peacock, Girl in a coat lying on her bed, N.Y.C., 2012
