Closed 2022

Monica Ikegwu's painting is a portrait in red, of red, and on red, and you just know it came into being through trial, error, and intuition. I can imagine Monica in the studio, listening to music and working out how to balance a face with a puffer jacket. All that shiny, slippery texture rendered in oil paint; what a task! I see the soft glow on her right shoulder, the folds and seams of the jacket, and I wonder, did she start with a red ground? Or did she build up the red around the figure? The upward tilt of the chin and the direct gaze of her eyes makes me feel like the painting is an open-ended conversation. Monica is an artist who is in dialogue with other painters. She's inspiring others in the way other artists have inspired her. As a viewer, you bring your own ideas and meanings to her work, so it's never a fixed idea but an open-ended discussion about the nature of being itself.