“Transitions: Mona Mia A Retrospective”

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

I have been teaching workshops for all ages for 48 years throughout the community and elementary art in public school, young kindergarten through fifth grade, for 26 years. I love art, children, and empowering them with techniques to express their creativity. I like to develop directions for the process that all students can master successfully on their individual levels following their hearts while producing a quality product that they can reflect on with pride and have fun while making it. I am capable of modifying components of the class depending on the needs of the students involved to create an individual adaptation.

I am also a practicing artist approaching the problems of creative expression in my own journey. I show my work locally in upstate New York and am a Friend of CERES Gallery in NYC where I usually exhibit once a year and in other shows that I find interesting. I live in a cottage that I built myself and am surrounded by deciduous forest and enjoy gardening when the season permits.

ARTIST STATEMENT

In many of the paintings, my intention was to give the viewer a glimpse into a peaceful moment in the Italian sense of capriccio. In others, particularly those which make use of funerary statuary, one is left questioning aspects of human solitude. It has been said that a landscape does not come alive until there is a figure in it. By using sculptures of human forms, I offer the viewer an identity within the painting. As they are stone, subtly a coldness permeates a peculiar isolation sets in emotionally. This shifts the pastoral mood to quiet thoughtful melancholia. This gives some observers a surrealistic impression of my work. In the architectural alleys, the viewer stands alone on the path. There is always the unseen, something more, a mystery around the corner or through the gate.