About

Monica Morabito grew up in the industrial Midwest during the twilight years of the steel and auto industry. Her childhood was spent in the post-war matchbox suburbs that sprang out of the manufacturing hub of Cleveland, Ohio. A place where for the artist, the promise of the American dream with its happy Brady Bunch families and heaping bowls of Captain Crunch cereal, crackled under the weighty dysfunction of a large Catholic Italian family.

For the budding young artist, art was a refuge…an almost daily escape. Any object, at any moment, was raw material for her art and expression. Yellow No. 2 school pencils were carved into screaming totem heads. A tree branch was chiseled into a stylized flute. School books and notebook margins were filled with caricatures and fantastic creatures.

Monica’s burgeoning talent caught the attention of a dedicated high school art teacher, who helped her win a top scholarship to the Columbus College of Art and Design — where she studied painting and drawing with an emphasis on figurative art, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a minor in illustration.

After graduation, the young artist took a detour into the commercial art and design field. An industry where the daily corporate grind and disingenuous nature of marketing quickly became a source of frustration and eventually, an endless fuel for her art.

The artist takes cues from her life experience – focusing on the sometimes harsh duality found all around us. Where the “beautiful surface” may belie dark, unseen cruel forces just beneath the beauty and sheen.

Her visual themes highlight the hidden duality around us. The dark and the light, the beauty and the beast. What is on the surface, is not always as it seems underneath.

She finds inspiration and kinship in style and painting technique through a diverse array of artists, such as: Rembrandt, Leonardo, Bouguereau, Vermeer, Rossetti, Waterhouse to contemporary artists Odd Nerdrum, Mark Ryden and Lori Early.