Artist based in Sweden

Mona & the Art

Love makes everything more beautiful

Works

Modern art made with feeling and passion. The photographs show the pieces in rooms — ask me for dimensions and materials.

Black textured painting with a wide gold band, above a white marble fireplace with red candlesticks and red roses. — The Light in the Darkness

Deep red painting with a graphite band, on a black wall above a sculptural wooden console with white flowers.

Black painting with golden brushstrokes, on a pistachio-green wall above a floating black console with a white sculpture.

Dark blue painting with a golden fissure, in a bright hallway under a staircase beside a black piano and a green plant.

Dark painting with a glowing yellow fissure, in a dim hallway above an olive dresser with blue vases.

Pale blue painting with gold and black along the right edge, on a white wall above teal ottomans in sunlight.

Vivid abstract painting in orange, yellow and black, on a dusty blue wall above a blue console table.

White painting with a relief pattern in a slim frame, against light wood panelling with dried branches in front.

Small dark painting with a turquoise core, in a black living room with a gold pendant lamp.

About Mona

Mona in a garden, smiling at the camera, holding up a large grey painting with a wide silver band.

I was born in Iran and grew up in Tehran. Freedom is what I hold highest, and it always has been.

I was eighteen when I started painting. An art teacher lived nearby, and the first time I saw her gallery I knew that I wanted this too. I trained, began with portraits in pencil and found it unbearably dull, so I moved on to landscapes in oil instead. Then it went quiet for many years.

When painting came back to me, it was the abstract that pulled at me. There are no rules to follow there, no one telling you how it should look. I suppose I am a free spirit. My sister came home from an exhibition once and said that if others could sell their paintings for that much, then so could I. That was the push I needed. I took courses in abstract painting to learn the craft behind the freedom, and started looking for a language of my own.

Today I work with texture. Acrylic on canvas, texture paste and palette knife, layer upon layer until the surface begins to breathe. The contrast between gold and black is the one I return to most often, but far from everything I make lives there. Some canvases want entirely different colours, and then I listen to them.

I like to paint in the morning, when the light is new and so am I. Always with music, but never music I can dance to, because then my hand stops painting and starts following the beat instead. I am a dancer at heart. Sometimes I know where a painting is going. More often it is the painting that knows, and I who get to follow.

Contact

Interested in a piece, or have a question? Do get in touch.

monaandtheart@gmail.com Follow on Instagram — @monaandtheart