BIO:
Michelle Mongan is a San Francisco-based artist whose work includes printmaking, paintings, and drawings. Her figures have been described by Sasha Chebil of The Daily Californian as “twisted,” "delicate," falling "in undefined lines" and having "limbs that fade into nothingness."
The seeds for Mongan’s artistic future were planted in college. While majoring in accounting, she took a drawing class and found the freedom and creativity that drawing provided to be a liberating gift from the analytical and precise nature of the accounting program. In 2005, after years of working in the accounting field, Mongan returned to art and, again, found it to provide a sense of balance in her life. Since 2005, she has been an artist and studied in San Francisco one-on-one and in small groups with the following brilliant San Francisco artists: Felix Macnee (painting and drawing), Peggy Gyulai (drawing), Jeremy Sutton (drawing), Michael Markowitz (drawing), and Katie Gilmartin (printmaking).
In 2012, Mongan ended a successful accounting career and began focusing on endeavors that she describes as being more “soul enriching,” including art, travel and volunteer work. She began publicly exhibiting her work in 2013 during San Francisco’s Fall Open Studios.
After traveling to Cuba in 2013 and 2014 and visiting the Sociedad Gráfica de Cienfuegos, in 2015 Mongan began studying printmaking under the direction of Cuban artist Rafael Cáceres, one of the Founders and the Director of the Sociedad Gráfica de Cienfuegos. She is incredibly honored by this rare opportunity and has been further honored to return in 2016-2019 working directly with Cuban artists Cáceres, Alexander Cárdenas and Manuel Quesada.
In 2018, Mongan became a member of City Art Cooperative Gallery in San Francisco, CA where she exhibits her printmaking in select monthly group exhibitions.
In 2019, Mongan assisted one of 38 artists who were selected to paint murals covering 10,052 square feet at the Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco, CA.
In 2021, Mongan became a member of San Francisco Women Artists Gallery in San Francisco, CA.
In 2024, Mongan became a member of Miwok Gallery in Half Moon Bay, CA
Mongan's work is influenced, in part, by: her teachers' techniques, Belkis Ayón’s collagraphs, da Vinci’s drawings, Matisse’s lines, Schiele’s nudes, van Gogh’s swirls, Renoir’s eyes, Morisot’s warmth, Kahlo’s pain, and Nature’s crisis.
Mongan has donated numerous pieces of her artwork to local non-profit organizations’ fundraising auctions including: Walk SF, The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Art for AIDS, San Francisco Women Artists Gallery, and Maitri Compassionate Care where she has been a regular volunteer and also served on the Finance Committee from 2015-2017.
Mongan has many private collectors in Cuba, Iceland, France, Italy and the United States.
SOLO EXHIBITION:
Community Art Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA - Boundary Oak, Juried by the Walnut Creek Arts Commission (2022-2023)
TWO-PERSON EXHIBITION:
FOG Far Out Gallery, San Francisco, CA - Regeneration (2023)
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
FOG Far Out Gallery, San Francisco, CA - Encore 2024 Holiday Show
1202 Contemporary, Gilroy, CA - Paper + Fiber (2024)
Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA - Salon at the Triton (2024)
FOG Far Out Gallery, San Francisco, CA - Surrealism Centennial (2024)
Museo Provincial, Cienfuegos, Cuba - Feria de la Estampa (2024)
O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Mill Valley, CA - Dualities (2024)
FOG Far Out Gallery, San Francisco, CA - Spirit World (2023)
San Francisco Women Artists Gallery - Reflections (2023) Juror: Ramón Silvestre, Museum Registrar and Curatorial Specialist, GLBT Historical Society
San Francisco Women Artists Gallery - Black, White and Shades Between (2023) Juror: Emebet B. Korn, Gallerist, Desta Gallery, Mill Valley, CA
Museum of Northern California Art (monca) - For the Love of Birds (2023)
FOG Far Out Gallery, San Francisco, CA - Flowers (2022)
San Francisco Women Artists Gallery - Patterns, Textures & Materials (2022)
de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA - Pictures of People (2022) Web Gallery Exhibition in connection with Alice Neel: People Come First
The Drawing Room, San Francisco, CA - WOMEN RISING (2022)
Arc Gallery, San Francisco, CA - Vices (2021) National Juried Exhibition, Juror: Philip Bewley, Director and Curator DZINE Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA - If a Tree Falls: Art of the Boundary Oak (2021-2022)
San Francisco Women Artists Gallery - Patterns & Symmetry (2021) Juror: Hillary Olcott, Associate Curator Arts of Africa, Oceana and the Americas at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: de Young and Legion of Honor
Las Laguna Art Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA - Small Works - Big Talent (2021)
Las Laguna Art Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA - A Light in the Darkness (2020)
FOG Far Out Gallery, San Francisco, CA - Pandemic Window Show (2020)
Drawing Room Annex, San Francisco, CA - Women Rising (2020)
Galería Federíco Fernández Cavado, Cienfuegos, Cuba - La Otra Tirada (2019)
Galería Federíco Fernández Cavado, Cienfuegos, Cuba - Feria de la Estampa (2017-2019)
City Art Cooperative Gallery (2018-2023)
Imago Dei Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA - Pre-Figured: Bay Area Figurative Artists (2018)
Artisans of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA (2018)
Alley Cat Books Gallery, San Francisco, CA - Naked Ladies Show (2015)
111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, CA - Pancakes & Booze Underground Art Show (2015)
AWARDS:
Juror’s Choice Award: If a Tree Falls: Art of the Boundary Oak, Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek CA (2022)
STATEMENT:
My art is created at studios located in San Francisco California and Cienfuegos Cuba and is typically based on drawings initially created with live studio models. Paintings (oil and acrylic) and printmaking (monotypes, woodcuts, linocuts, and collagraphs) provide opportunities to revisit, reimagine and reinvent life drawings into new settings, contexts and meanings.
Figures and portraits often have missing parts, limbs, or features representing my own incompleteness. Distortions demonstrate the beauty in imperfections. Exaggerations exemplify the struggle for truth. Puzzles and pieces express connection/disconnection, interconnection, fitting in, belonging and being a small piece of the enormity. Female figures frequently personify Mother Earth / Mother Nature and her climate in crisis.
In late 2020, I began a body of work celebrating, honoring and memorializing the life of the 325-year-old Boundary Oak Tree that was tragically destroyed in an intense windstorm. I’ve created a series of woodblock prints, woodblock monoprints, handmade paper, and mixed media pieces that include ash, sawdust, leaves and wood from the Boundary Oak tree. While the Boundary Oak is no longer standing, it continues to live on in another time, form and place in my ongoing, evolving, and ever-growing Boundary Oak Series.