Coming back to art doesn't feel like a pivot. It feels like a homecoming.
My name is Maria, and I'm a surface pattern designer based in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
I spent more than two decades in the corporate world — in law, management consulting and bioethics. But after years of navigating a demanding career and fibromyalgia, I made a conscious choice to return to something I had set aside long ago: making beautiful things.
I began my education in fine arts in 1993 before pivoting to philosophy and law. Decades later, I understand that the creative path was always where I was meant to be.
The road back to art began unexpectedly. During the uncertainty of 2020, I needed something to make me feel grounded and present. I picked up needlepoint, a craft my mother-in-law had taught me years earlier, just before my daughter was born. I found in it a kind of quiet that nothing else was giving me at the time. As I went deeper into the craft, I became fascinated by how needlepoint designers created their patterns. That curiosity led me to surface pattern design. And surface pattern design led me here.
Growing up, I was always drawn to people and ideas that existed outside the expected. Creativity became the way I made sense of the world -through colors, through shapes, through the act of looking closely at things.
That same instinct drew me toward law. But it also drew me toward a deep love of beauty in the everyday and a desire to draw beauty out of the mundane.
Those two things have never really been separate for me. Art and meaning live in the same place.
How the Work Is Made
Gathered from Nature
Every design begins outdoors. In my garden, on walks, in the quiet moments of looking, seeing and foraging. I press flowers and plants, scan them, draw them by hand, and let them tell me what they want to become.
Built by Hand
My process moves from sketchbook to ink drawing, then to Procreate, and finally to Adobe Illustrator. My studio wall is a living mood board covered in pictures, printouts, and found objects that hold the feeling of whatever collection is forming.
Guided by Intuition
I limit my time online deliberately. I want my own creativity and visual voice to lead. I look inward. The work that comes from that place carries something that trend-chasing never could.
What Drives the Aesthetic
My influences are rooted in craft, history, and intention as well as a deep reverence for the artistic traditions that have shaped Western design in ways that are not always fully acknowledged.
The Arts and Crafts movement, which I love deeply, was itself profoundly shaped by Asian art and design. The Japanese aesthetic including its economy of line, its reverence for the natural world, its belief that beauty and function are not opposites, ran through that entire era like a quiet current. Japonisme transformed how Western artists looked at pattern, at negative space, at the relationship between a motif and its ground. Chinoiserie brought the elegance of Chinese decorative tradition into European interiors and textiles.
That lineage matters to me. I'm drawn to Roseville pottery, Motawi tile, and the chinoiserie tradition because they all carry the unmistakable mark of a hand that cared deeply about what it was making.
I work to bring that same quality of attention to every pattern I design. I'm drawn to florals and flora above all, but more than prettiness, I'm drawn to designs that mean something. Pieces that visually tie back to another time, another idea, another place.
Detail and realism matter to me deeply. I want my motifs to look as true to life because truth, even in a flower petal, is what gives a design its soul.
Who I Create For
I create for someone who appreciates beautiful things and has distinctive taste. They're likely creative themselves, or at the very least, a deep appreciator of art and handcrafted work. They're not looking for something pretty off the shelf. They're looking for work with soul and intention behind it.
Many of the people who bring Emily Maria designs into their lives are quilters, sewists, decorators, and creators who carry my patterns into something they're building with their own hands. There's something I love about that exchange. Two makers, connected through a piece of fabric or a roll of wallpaper.
Explore the Collection
Emily Maria Studios designs are available on Etsy and through the full design library on Spoonflower. If you're interested in licensing, wholesale, or collaboration, I'd love to hear from you.