A trained artist, applying her hand to walls.

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

Empressive Finishes is my independent business, built on the way decorative work has always made sense to me — with the care of a trained hand, applied to surfaces that people live around every day.

Most of my work sits in two lanes: hand-applied decorative finishes (Venetian plaster, lime wash, polished plaster, faux textures) and bespoke custom wall art — murals, hand-painted scenes, commissioned interior pieces. Premium house painting is in the toolkit when the schedule needs filling, but it’s not the front-window service.

What I bring to a wall is not a recipe. It’s a decade of patience drawing faces by hand — a hundred portraits, a hundred different surfaces — quietly trained the eye that now reaches a finish. Every job is a small commission. Every room is a place someone lives.

On most jobs I work with the founder of Odyssey Projects, Filipp Agafonov, who is on site for quality assurance and metric tracking on director-overseen jobs. The two of us are how Empressive earns its rate.