Emily Yosway Herr

Emily Herr is a Richmond muralist working under the name HerrSuite. With over a decade of professional experience, she specializes in large-scale, context-driven murals characterized by vibrant imagery and narrative depth.

A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Herr has built a full-time practice creating custom murals for public, commercial, and residential clients across the United States and internationally. Her work spans from Bolivia to Kosovo, reflecting a deep engagement with place, community, and visual storytelling.

Herr’s projects are often research-based, incorporating local histories, interviews, and archival material into intricate compositions. Recent works include a 4,500-square-foot mural in Richmond exploring the area’s industrial past, and a 2,500-square-foot mural in Roanoke interpreting the evolution of transportation through dynamic, figurative movement. Her approach emphasizes how people interact with space, using murals as immersive environments that connect past, present, and future.

CV available upon request.

I’m here, and I’m doing it on purpose. My life and art practice center around the belief that you should embrace your space - your body, house, neighborhood, city, all of it. Each project is a unique opportunity to explore a new context that will drive the shape of the art I create.

Illustration has always held the strongest draw for me of all the visual arts. The co-dependence between an image and everything around it fascinates me, and I play with the interaction that may normally happen between words and images on a page on the much larger scale of walls, homes, and cities.  

Mural painting appeals to me as a challenging and curious setting for illustration. Every location for every mural I work on is different, and I enjoy getting to know the layout, the decoration, the view, the inhabitants of each new place. It’s especially surreal to experience the rhythms of cars and people and animals moving around me as I work there for a few days or weeks - it gives a very strong sense of place, one that I seek for my work to resonate with as I add to the local visual environment. 

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