By BONNIE OWEN
On Nov. 4 at 4:30 p.m., Mona Ray will be demonstrating how to “Make Small Studies on Paper, Refine your style, and Increase Sales!” at The Foothills Artist Association Gallery in Porter Hall, located at 4975 Memorial Drive in La Mesa.
Best known for her gestural and atmospheric landscapes, Mona Ray moved to San Diego in 1995 and has worked as a professional artist for the last 19 years. Her paintings have been exhibited in galleries in Colorado, New Mexico, and California. FINE Magazine featured an extensive interview about her work, and Sundance Studio’s Studiovox called her one of “Five Artists You Should Know.”
Mona lives and works in La Jolla. She is represented by Walker Fine Art in Denver, Emerald C Gallery in Coronado and Perry Gallery in La Jolla.
Starting with brief sketches in the landscape, the remainder of her process is studio based, where explorations and interpretations of her initial observations develop gradually through layers of charcoal, acrylic, and oil. The final paintings preserve the evidence of this spontaneous and intuitive approach, a journey in marks and paint.
With the landscape as her ever-present muse, these paintings weave together elements of observation and memory, seeking a moment of transcendence in a time of uncertainty. While ethereal skies remain a focus in this series, trees share the stage in much of my recent work: beckoning, sheltering, gesturing toward the evanescent light.
Mona’s journey into a painting begins with charcoal or ink, or acrylic, sometimes collage, beginning with a loosely held subject and an openness to the process. Her approach is intuitive and spontaneous.
“With brushes, palette knives, and plenty of paint, I gradually build up colors and textures in the work, drawing in and scraping through with various tools. After the first several layers are dry, I return to the piece with layers of oil paint, at each stage considering if the conversation in the piece is coming to a close or if there is more yet to say,” she says. “Throughout this process, the painting ebbs and flows between chaos and clarity, destruction and creation, until the dialogue slows and the painting begins to say something that feels true. The piece opens up at this point and becomes three things at once: a landscape, a tangible record of my thoughts and struggles as I created it, and something larger, something I cannot entirely claim as my own — a whole greater than the sum of its parts.”
To learn more about Mona’s art, visit bit.ly/3p96vUB.
— Bonnie Owen writes on behalf of the Foothills Art Association.
