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Monica Callaghan

Monica Callaghan is a self-taught abstract artist, who grew up in South Africa but now lives and works in East Kent. After immersing herself in several creative fields including acting, singing, mosaics, landscaping, and interiors, Monica began painting in 2011, developing her current practice whilst living in Germany between 2015 and 2019. Building her abstracts up in multiple layers to convey depth both visually and emotionally, her work is profoundly personal – “an outpouring of emotion - conscious memories and memories held only in the body. It is this inner landscape, the conscious and subconscious thoughts that shape themselves into colours and textures on the canvas”. At a recent exhibition, a collector said he could look at a particular painting of Monica’s all day and still see something different on each viewing. “This is exactly what I aim for – to create paintings that the viewer can discover, question, and perhaps recognise”. 

Entitled Undercurrents, this series of paintings are a dance - created by the coming together of the heart and the body. “They are all about intuition - about what I know without knowing. The body remembers, and this is a practice of allowing hidden memories and emotions to be expressed in colour and texture. Instinct, curiosity, and a meditative quality all come together to create these evocative emotional landscapes”.