BIO:
Monica's background was in professional illustration, with a client list of clients like Hatchett Books, Abrams, Harper Collins, and the Wall Street Journal. Monica illustrated live from the runway during London Fashion Week and Shanghai Fashion Week before she began painting fine art full-time. In 2012, Monica saw an opening in the creative business space and founded and hosted the podcast Smart Creative Women, where she interviewed over 300 women who were in the business of creativity. Prior to this, she traveled as an international flight attendant. With wanderlust and creativity leading her, she gathered her experiences and shifted into painting and now write about the creative process on the Substack, The Smart Creative.
STATEMENT:
MONICA LEE RICH
b. Vicenza, Italy
“As a painter, I move in and out of abstraction, freeing myself and shaking off anything I may have constructed as taboo, in the hopes of having my work balance power with poetry, rigor with vulnerability.
In that spirit, my practice continues to evolve, shifting between the romantic and the cerebral as I seek a language that is both deeply personal and universally resonant.
My work is centered on the sensual and poetic; I want to invite the viewer to linger in the intimacy of that.
My work is not about being static, I desire to imbue it with an otherworldliness that I feel when I am creating it.
I am very interested in the marks created on the canvas and how they can portray movement, which can take the form of chaos, growth, explosive trauma, erotic passion, or sorrow. This human story, which repeats itself even as humanity evolves, holds fascination for me.
The marks I make are a result of how I feel humanity, pulsing, carrying momentum, losing it, and finding it again. ” -MLR