Monica Shulman
Interactive Gallery
Monica Shulman is a self-taught artist whose brand of gestural abstraction is a form of storytelling. Her world is best described as colorful and rhythmic. Through her heavily layered and sculptural technique and mark-making, Monica’s paintings are compulsively energetic as she creates with both reckless abandon and careful restraint. Exploring themes of the human condition, identity, motherhood, and self-reflection, her intuitive work is process-oriented and she learns through experimentation. Ranging from oil paint, pastel, charcoal, pencil, oil stick, and more, Monica engages the medium itself as a participant in her work. A first-generation American of Cuban and Argentinian descent, who left her career as an attorney to focus on her art practice full-time, Monica lives and works in the lower Hudson Valley of New York with her husband and their children.
Monica has been featured in various publications including The Washington Post, Popular Photography, Create Magazine, and Westchester Magazine. In 2019, the Director of PULSE Art Fair in Miami invited Monica to participate in the “Next Generation” exhibit to celebrate the fair’s 15th anniversary. In 2022 she was invited to join the National Association of Women Artists. Her work has been shown at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, the National Association of Women Artists, Photo LA, Art Market Hamptons, PULSE Art Fair, The National Arts Club, and the New York Mercantile Exchange, among others.
ARTIST STATEMENT
“The Storm We Weathered Together” —2021 and 2022
“The Storm We Weathered Together” is a collection of oil paintings created in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic that explores themes of self-reflection, the human condition, community, and identity. The active participants in these pieces are my materials: heavy layers of oil paint and oil pastel.
As the world begins to slowly open up again, the works explore a yearning to connect with each other after living in an extended period of isolation since the start of 2020. The overall sentiment remains and the paintings are accessible and visually calming, yet still chaotic and slightly out of reach. The fogginess and uncertainty of the times is presented with varying degrees of drips and layers but coupled with my choice of bright, vibrant colors, the work evokes an elusive feeling of optimism and joy for the future. I’ve reflected on the world we’ve been observing on screens and used my impasto style, three-dimensional work to counter and reflect this two-dimensional existence and I’m experimenting with the dynamic tension between connected comfort and distance with the paint’s weight and texture.
Each work in the series has its own story and place. Seen together, the collection is like a brightly colored room of ideas communicating independently and together at the same time. I hope you find a piece of your own narrative in this work.
- “Static” 60×72 $10,500
- “I’ll Meet You There” 36×48 $4800
- “Other People” 36×48 $5200
- “September” 36×48 $4900
- “What You Seek” 60×72 $10,200
- “Together” 36×38 $4800
- “There is a Light” 36×38 $4800
- “When the Night is Over” 60×72 $10,500
- “In a Manner of Speaking” 60×72 $10,500
- “Solid Ground” 24×30 $2800
- “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” 24×30 $2800
- “Take Good Care” 24×30 $2800
- “Arms Around a Memory” 24×24 $2200
- “Labyrinth” 12×16 $875
- “Vortex” 12×16 $875
- “Windows” 11×14 $675
- “Our Day Will Come” 36×48 $5200
- “Woman” 36×48 $520
- “Meet me at the River” 36×48 $4900
IG @monicashulman
