Emma Thompson grew in an artistic family. She was therefore inspired to paint from a very young age. Her grandmother was a painter, her sister was a successful ceramist and her father had many artistic talents. She grew up in Canterbury where she showed artistic aptitude at an early age of four. In fact, at that age she was the only member of her class who could draw houses on three-dimensions, and later created characters for several greeting card publishers which were licensed worldwide. She continued with her love of arts to secondary school and her art teacher noticed her talent. At one time, her art teacher almost cried when she told her she wanted to leave arts and become a beautician. However, Emma finished secondary school then proceeded to Hatfield College of Art where she completed her foundation course in art. She later joined Middlesex Polytechnic where she studied Graphics Design.
Upon her graduation, Emma Thompson worked for a major greetings card publisher and later on created two character ranges for another publisher which has been licensed around the world. Despite the enormous success of her licensed ranges, she began to lose enthusiasm for working as an employee and had already had to teach a team of people to paint color by numbers in her style. Emma decided to set up on her own after finding the day-to-day process of art administration, rather than creation quite soul destroying. She became an exclusive freelance artist for another publisher before, after three years, deciding to become wholly non-exclusive., she launched the company which has subsequently created the “Felicity Wishes” range, which is now one of the most successful character licenses in the world.
