All is a Circle Within Me

“All is a circle within me./I have gone into the world and out again./I have gone to the
edge of the sky./Now all is at peace within me./Now all has a place to come home.”

–Nancy Wood

The works in this exhibition propound the infinite and eternal interconnectedness of
existence through two radically different modes of representation—one figurative and
organic, the other abstract and geometric. Both modalities take the circle as their central
theme, a universal symbol used across a wealth of cultures and spiritual traditions to
embody totality, wholeness, unity, and timelessness. In creating these pieces, McIlroy
embraces a worldview in which time is non-linear and cyclical in nature, and in which all
beings and phenomena are profoundly and elegantly bound together in relationship.

Referencing Alaska Native spiritual beliefs, Celtic interlace designs, and Tibetan
funerary practices, All is a Circle Within Me immerses the viewer in various allusions to
the infinite. It offers representations of space and time that point to the true nature of our
cosmos as eternal, intimately interwoven, and ordered by divine immanence. It is the
artist’s hope that these works can serve as tools for absorption, instilling in beholders a
numinous sense of both deep peace and tremendous awe. “I aspire to take audiences
‘into the world and out again,’ to ‘the edge of the sky,’ and full circle back ‘home’.”

ARTIST BIO:

(b.1983) Emily McIlroy was born and raised in Norman, Oklahoma. She received her BA
in Studio Art from the University of Arizona in 2005 and her MFA in Drawing and
Painting from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM) in 2011. She served many
years as an instructor and art educator for the Honolulu Museum of Art School and the
Hawai‘i State Art Museum, and currently teaches in the Drawing and Painting Program
at UHM. When she’s not in her studio, Emily enjoys reading, writing, and walking and
swimming her way through terrestrial and aquatic wildernesses. She lives and works on
the island of Oahu with her Siamese cat, Gormaen.