MONICA LEE RICH
b. 1964 Vicenza, Italy
“I have moved into the language of abstraction that frees me, and shakes off anything I may have constructed as taboo. My mark-making has evolved to portray an inner life with its mysteries, passions, and its inherent sexuality.
When the painter of an abstract work of art is a woman herself, she is able to possess a narrative exclusive to her sexuality, which she carries with her everywhere and in every construct.
In my work, it plays out as subtle electricity, laced with the erotic, dipping into the divine.
I take the conversations of old masters into my studio, which once portrayed the feminine as deflowered, fertile, and moving onto decay, and shift them to the interior world of a female and the space she exists in that is deeply rooted and life-giving.” -MLR.
With a degree in Fine Arts, Monica's background was in professional illustration, working in editorial art and then fashion work, illustrating at both London Fashion Week and Shanghai Fashion Week.
She hosted a podcast called Smart Creative Women and now writes for The Smart Creative on Substack, where she writes about her creative process as a painter.
