Opening Reception: Mona Brody: The Space In Between: What Lingers Unseen

Artist Statement:

What is meant to be seen is not an obvious declaration of the tenets of abstraction, but a fusion of vastly different emotions filled with empathy and imagination.

I am a painter committed to the physical evolution of the surface. I continue to explore the use of alternative applicators and challenge the traditional approach to painting by using handmade oil paints, pigmented shellac, and a variety of painting mediums on canvas.

For me, painting is about discovering an image within its hidden truths. Through a rigorous process of working, reworking, layering, and subtracting, I attempt to locate a specific but unnamable place—an environment with its own internal rules that often surprise me.

At this mature phase of my career, my work is no longer about the act of "learning" how to paint, but about pushing the medium to express the weight of the human experience through the enduring language of color, texture, and form.

Bio:

Mona Brody is an accomplished artist whose solo exhibitions have been presented at leading venues across the United States and internationally. Mona Brody's recent paintings convey a mysterious and ineffable beauty. Her current body of work, "Portals, Apparitions, and Other Voices," offers points of entry into an aesthetic territory filled with spirit, thought, and emotion.

Her solo exhibitions include The Montclair Art Museum, The Painting Center in New York, Pratt Institute’s President’s Gallery, Brooklyn, Drawing Rooms in Jersey City, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, NJ, Kimmel Gallery in Philadelphia, Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia, Barrett Gallery at Utica College, Lemmon Gallery at Kent State University, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts in Summit, and Ben Shahn Galleries at William Paterson University.

Brody’s work can be found in prominent public collections, among them the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York, the Morris Museum, the Boleslawiec Art Museum, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Zimmerli Art Museum, the Chateau d'Orquevaux in France, the Montclair Art Museum, the New Jersey State Museum, and the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper.

She has received awards and honors from the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, three Geraldine Dodge Foundation Artist Fellowships, the 33rd International Sculpture Symposium in Poland, and grants from the Contemporary Artist Center in Massachusetts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Women’s Studio Workshop Inc., and the Connecticut Graphic Arts Center. She was recognized with the 2015 Distinguished Alumna Award from Moore College of Art & Design and was nominated for the 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.

Brody’s commitment to art education and advocacy is reflected in honors such as the New Jersey Governor’s Award in Art Education and her designation as Professor Emeritus by Pratt Institute in 2024. Her academic credentials include an MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts, an MS in Art Education from Massachusetts College of Art, and a BFA in Printmaking from Moore College of Art & Design.

She was the 2006 trailblazer for the arts community at Manufacturer’s Village Artists in East Orange and currently maintains her studio there. In addition, she serves on the board of its nonprofit, continuing her role as a leader and mentor within the arts community.