In this joint exhibition at Seventh Circle Art Gallery, Birmingham-based painters Emma Woolley and Tara Harris explore inner worlds shaped by emotion, experience and memory.

For both women, painting is a place of freedom and escape from the pressures of everyday life, taking them into realms of their imagination.

Woolley and Harris first met two years ago, through the United Artists of South Birmingham, when they were both in the very early stages of their painting careers. Now, they present their first joint exhibition, featuring more than 15 new paintings which have not been shown publicly before.

Harris will show a series of otherworldly landscapes which she often paints late into the night. Working intuitively, she allows imagery to surface and represents “presences instead of places – inner terrains that suggest states of being, felt experiences, and emotional atmospheres.”

In ‘Vestige’, an uncanny architectural form surfaces from an ocean of rippling pinks and hazy greens. Set below an atmospheric sky, this dreamlike composition evokes the work of Birmingham’s surrealists who were interested in connecting with their subconscious minds, typically working with muted tones similar to Harris’ palette.

The same poetic quality defines ‘Tiger Trees’, in which a sun appears to set over a surreal landscape of trees, mountainous forms and winding pathways into the artist’s own imagination. Harris is less interested in representing reality than developing her own language of layered mark-making in a creative space where she exists beyond her everyday roles of mum and carer.

The artist has said she “explores the complex and often fragile relationship between humans and the natural world, which has the capacity to heal, nurture, and transform.” She hopes that viewers will “find their own narrative” when looking at her work, which has helped her process grief and unearth memories of significance.

Painting is also deeply therapeutic for Woolley, who will be showing a series of new contemporary portraits conjured directly from her imagination. Her figures are intimate, closely-cropped, and psychologically charged, often stripped of environmental context to focus attention on expression, gesture, and inner lives.

Among her new, large-scale paintings is ‘Totem I’, in which she has symbolically positioned one head above another. As the artist has explained, these figures represent “shifting states of mind, feelings of being under pressure and the sense of emotional weight that people carry.”

Working through the grief of losing her mother, Woolley is interested “in painting not what is pretty but what is unseen.” Her monumental portraits hum with energy, bold colour and dramatic lines – less about likeness, they map human feelings which we all experience but often try to contain.

By day, Woolley is Senior Art Director at YouSayTomato, a creative agency based in Digbeth’s Custard Factory. However, it’s through painting that she can reconnect with herself – all her portraits could be seen as self-portraits, where energy and power can be felt in her loose, confident brushwork.

For both artists, painting offers real freedom of expression. In a world of airbrushed portraits and picturesque shots for social media, their compositions reveal hidden worlds and deeper meaning. They have also had an impact on one another, which is evident in their shared approach to painting as a way of accessing and working through emotions. Since picking up their paintbrushes, these artists have achieved success – nationally and internationally. In the last few years, both have been longlisted for the prestigious Jacksons Art Prize, while Harris was named International Artist of the Year by Arts to Hearts, and Woolley was shortlisted for the Paula Rego Painting Prize by Women in Art.

But these rising stars felt it was important to have a show at Seventh Circle, an exciting new commercial gallery in their hometown where there’s a growing community of artists. “We really are part of Birmingham’s arts community, where we can see that being an artist is possible and we can make it happen by being proactive and working together, rather than in silo.”

The free exhibition runs from Seventh Circle Art Gallery and Picture Framers: Unit C3, 2 Bowyer Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, B10 0SA from 6 June - 5 July. For more information, visit: innerworldsshow.co.uk