Cover Image: Visitors take in the richly layered, nature-infused portraits featured in Em Anders’ Wanderer exhibition. Photo supplied.

WAnderer is the first solo exhibition for (the time being) Goldfields-based mural and studio artist, Em Anders. The title chosen for the state’s initials and closeness to the artist’s surname. It’s an explosion of rich colours, but also serene reflections, capturing the essence of landscape identities from across Western Australia, each unique and recognisable.

The sixteen featured pieces are the artist’s celebration and love letters to some of the coastal and remote interior places she explored with her family during a ten-month caravan journey in 2021, and more than the half the artworks sold at the exhibition launch. The goddess-like subjects in each painting are surrounded and imbued with elements and animals native to the region and creates a surreal and pleasing atheistic. Each work seems to invoke a gentle pull of familiarity on the observer’s soul and a desire to be immersed in the place it represents. The artist has explained that for her, it starts with the pose of the subject, rather than her appearance, and from that how other components will be incorporated. 

When the Anders family embraced the full time travelling lifestyle a little over four-years ago, the intention had been to stay on the road for much longer than they did, but  family and life obligations drew them back to the Goldfields, where Em resumed painting commissioned murals, running Paint and Sip classes from The Maker’s Tribe Studio – a collective with another three artists, and completing studio works. Kalgoorlie-Boulder is home to more than two dozen of Em’s large-scale murals at shopping centres, schools, hotels, and public spaces. You can also find Em Anders murals in Ravensthorpe, Perth, Leonora, Southern Cross, Menzies, and Laverton. 

Around a year ago, the idea for an exhibition based on the 2021 journey became an irresistible compulsion, and Em commenced work on capturing her passion and affinity for the natural beauty of WA in its many forms. A timely invitation to exhibit from local organisation, Artgold, gave the artist a gallery venue and a deadline, with much of the work being complete in the last few months. 

“I’m usually painting several works on the go. And often get inspired for the next ones while painting the works in progress. This exhibition started with Karijini. The place is so beautiful, one of my all-time favourite places. It inspired the first work in this exhibition. I even gave myself a tattoo in Karijini caravan park I felt such a connection to the place… so classy.”

Em has also experimented freely with this exhibition, using multiple mediums and surfaces including wood and canvas panels and mixing up acrylics and oils – something the artist tells me discreetly is, “not the done thing, and not to judge her’, and sometimes combining resin and paint. 

“I like learning what happens when you break the rules. Experimenting with techniques and looks. Many paintings don’t turn out anything like what I thought they would at the start, and I enjoy that exploration, also what Bob Ross said about, ‘happy little accidents’. I think that can be beautiful.  I like hiding things in my paintings too, symbols, scribbles and messages. It gives people more things to discover.”

The pull of the open road and remote spaces has not left the artist, nor her family – husband and two teen daughters – and after four years based back in the Goldfields the Anders family is keen to resume their wandering nomadic lifestyle with Em painting out doors or under a marquee and creating new murals in new towns, sharing her work with communities across the state. Earlier next year the artist expects to begin in Esperance, then Perth for a short time before seeing as much of Western Australia as she can.

Wherever you are in WA in 2026, keep an eye out for the Anders family bus as they ‘Wander’ through the coastlines and red dirt of Western Australia and everywhere in between, with Em creating new works everywhere she goes. 

“I’d like to paint the rest of Australia.”

The WAnderer exhibition is open until December 6^th at Artgold, Burt St, Boulder. You can follow Em’s artwork and journey through:

www.emanders.com.au