2024 has been a big year for me and my business. I’ve had some great achievements this year and it feels like I’ve really grown as a person. Here’s a selection of highlights from the year I wanted to share with you!

January

I started the year by having my art published in t’ART magazine – I loved having my art in print and seeing it amongst so many other amazing creators. This month also saw the start of the Joy and Pleasure zine working with Ru Vodden to illustrate their poetry. At this point, the zine was just four post-it notes, and I’m amazed at how this developed over the months!

February

February was great, even if it was very cold and marred with train delays! I worked on the Younity Community Mural with Sophia Barton and lots of other artists from around the North East. Each person created an artwork on A4 which was then edited and combined together to create four amazing murals. You can read more about this here.

This month I also worked on a rebrand for Sugar and Ivy, a queer baker based in the North East. I’ve written more about this in another blog, which you can read here.

March

March was a lot of fun for me – the year really started to get going here and I created some new lino prints based on Orpheus, in the style of Greek pottery fragments. I also modelled for the first time for London Drawing online, which was just fantastic – I had a lot of fun with those poses!

I rounded the month off with a wonderful time at the LGBT Northern Social Group event on Trans Day of Visibility on the 31^st. It was so fantastic to see so many trans people gather together and be unapologetically visible and beautiful. I really enjoyed meeting so many new people there.

April

In April, I wrote my longest zine to date, M*A*S*K, about masking as an autistic person, and what that means for me. The zine includes some suggestions for allistic (non-autistic) people to accommodate autistic people in spaces and at events.

With the help of Joseph Wong at Yellow Rivers Studio I launched my website www.emoryartmodel.co.uk, including a portfolio, shop, about me, and events pages.

This month I also celebrated one year married to my wonderful husband by travelling to Rethymno in Crete and taking some time off. It was so delightful to spend time somewhere hot and enjoy new places, read on the beach, and find some space to be creative. I started writing Baby and the Minotaur, the first part of which is now complete and will be published in the New Year!

May

May was a busy month for me. It saw the relaunch of Queer Life Drawing, an online life drawing class that celebrates queer people, exclusively working with queer models. It’s been delightful to facilitate these sessions and bring the joy of life drawing to folks from 17 different countries around the world. I really feel that these sessions are helping me solidify my style and I’m growing as an artist because of it!

It also saw the start of The Marra Project as a concept, which has led me to apply for funding to run more community events, such as art workshops and help provide more community spaces.

We celebrated the start of Pride season with the Queer Craft Faire organised by Bookwyrm. Despite the rain, we had a wonderful time celebrating queerness and showing Durham how much queer joy there is!

I also started a neurodivergence business course with Joyfully Different and Supersonic Startup, which has been invaluable in improving my business knowledge, confidence, and networking skills, helping me and my business grow.

June

June and July were the months for exhibitions and collaborations! I was awarded the ARCUS Pride Art Prize by Clifford Chance, which saw two of my more abstract pieces of work exhibited for three months in the company’s Newcastle offices. I also had my work ‘Trans joy is real and pure’ printed at A0 to be part of a queer art rail trail organised by Queer Cumbria in June. Two articles I wrote were published in Queer Cumbria’s magazine, which features art and queer stories from all around the North of England.

I also went to Edinburgh Pride and had a wonderful time meeting folks not just from Edinburgh, but around the world! I finally met up with the amazing Callen Wynn and their wife, Huld Martha Hoelvold, for the first time. We got to know each other through Queer Life Drawing online in 2021, and it was so lovely to get to chat sci-fi, drawing, and creation whilst eating the BEST ramen.

July

I started July with the Queer Bodies Are Holy exhibition, which was my first-ever solo exhibition. This saw twenty-four brand new pieces of art depicting queer people from around the North East of England. There was a lot of joy found in this exhibition with over half of the works sold within a month of the exhibition. Over 130 people came to view this exhibition over 6 days, which started with a delightful opening night where members of the community came to view the works, chat, and generally have a lovely time.

Personally, July was a big month for me as having this exhibition really affirmed my confidence as an artist. I decided to get my top surgery scars tattooed over with bright red lines by the amazing Zach at Start Today Tattoo. And yes, tattoos are gender-affirming care.

August

August was a quiet month business-wise, which I was very grateful for after the business of June and July. I did just one event that month and generally spent some time resting and looking after myself. I also started going to the gym once a week this month which has made a big impact on my strength and wellbeing.

September

I modelled in person for London Drawing for the first time and attended the Music Publishers Association course. I enjoyed both of these massively and it was great to model for a class of newcomers to life drawing. Whilst the course was not art-related, I think it’s important to remind people who see me as an artist that I trained as a musician and work for Contemporary Music for All, a music charity focussed on improving access to contemporary music. It’s a job I really love and gives me the freedom to create art without having to worry so much about paying the bills every month.

I also celebrated my 24^th birthday and spent the day at Diggerland near Durham, which was truly delightful. It was lovely to reflect on what I’d been up to in the last year too and remember how much progress I’ve made.

October

October started with the finishing of a new project for Trans Giving UK, which sends out winter care packages to trans people across the UK. This year, I created an artwork. All of the 400 packages sent out included an A5 print of my artwork, which made me feel very proud to support other trans people and help bring some joy in the darker winter months.

This month I had my work exhibited in the collaborative Queer Youth Art Collective group exhibition, DREAM THIS SILLY (read more here), in London from 4^th October to 6^th December 2024. I submitted a digital art print (which you can view here) and my M*A*S*K zine, and I was very pleased to see the positive reception of these two works as part of the exhibition.

November

Workshops and markets abounded this month, with the launch of the Pride of Place project in association with No More Nowt, Northern Heartland, and In the Light, as part of the Cultivate Commissions. Despite the difficult weather with snow, wind, and storms, the workshops still went ahead and brought a lot of joy to queer people around County Durham. We focussed on creating beautiful art and poetry and sharing stories in a sober space. It was an absolute delight to behold, and it really showed that when people are given the space and materials, they can be fantastically creative.

December

In December, I attended my first zine fair as a seller, which was SO much fun! York Zine Fest was such a lovely event. It was the launch of my new zine in collaboration with Ru Vodden, Joy and Pleasure, a poetry zine focussed on sharing the joys of life as trans people. You can pick up a copy here

The big thing for this month is that I incorporated The Marra Project, which is a company I run to create more artwork, get people involved in the arts, and create queer community. Queer Life Drawing is now part of this company, and I will round off the year with facilitating one last life drawing session with Queer Life Drawing with Huld, featuring a fantastic mask and a wonderful celebration of Yuletide.

What a year it has been! I cannot wait to see what happens next year; bring on 2025!