Emma Steinkraus makes colourful, fantastical paintings and installations about gender, myth-making, and the more-than-human world. Her project Impossible Garden, exhibited at the Museums at Washington and Lee University (W&L), spotlights the contributions of historical women artist-naturalists through paintings and an immersive wallpaper collaged from reproductions of their work. Her work has been included in recent exhibitions at 1969 Gallery (New York, NY), UNTITLED Art Fair (Miami, FL), Sow & Tailor x WOAW Gallery (Hong Kong, China), the StadtPalais Museum (Stuttgart, Germany), and Hashimoto Contemporary (Los Angeles, CA). She has also recently participated in group exhibitions at Carl Freedman Gallery (Margate, UK) and Steve Turner Gallery (Los Angeles, CA).
She has attended artist residencies at the Studios at MASS MoCA, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ox-Bow, the Wassaic Project, and the Blue Mountain Center, among many others. Recent awards include the Eliza Moore Fellowship at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in 2020 and a Helen Frankenthaler Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in 2022. Her work has been on the cover of New American Paintings and featured in Artsy, Burnaway, BOOOOOOOM, Art Maze Magazine, and Juxtapoz. She lives and works in Lexington, Virginia.