An artist first, in everything she makes.

I’m Emma Jayne. Most people call me Em. I’ve been drawing portraits and painting since I was a child, and I’ve worked with my hands in Auckland homes for years.

Empressive Finishes is my independent business. It is built on the way careful work has always made sense to me, the patience of a trained hand, given to the things in a home that are meant to last and to be looked at closely.

My work sits in two places. There are the custom commissions, hand-painted murals, feature walls, and pieces made for one room and one family. And there are the fine finishes, the work that has to be exact: furniture restoration, wall panelling, plaster craft, historic wooden panel detailing, and the small precise repairs most trades are too busy to slow down for. When a job needs more hands than mine, I can call in trusted hands, Jess’s crew among them, so the bigger work stays in good company too.

What I bring is not a recipe. It is a decade of patience drawing faces by hand, a hundred portraits, a hundred different surfaces, quietly training the eye that now reaches a finish. Every commission is a small act of trust. Every room is a place someone lives.

I run the studio independently. I take the brief directly, quote the work directly, and stand on every piece that leaves with my name on it.