Monica Lim is the Traditional Artist Spotlight winning artist for the month of February 2022. She is an award-winning artist based in Singapore.
Monica’s Solo Art Exhibition will be featured on the website for the month of February 2022. The gallery will promote Monica and her work on the Fusion Art website, individual online press releases to hundreds of outlets, email blasts to over 7,500+ buyers, collectors, galleries and art professionals, in online event calendars, art news websites and through the gallery’s extensive social media outlets. Fusion Art’s objective is to promote the Artist Spotlight winning artists, worldwide, to art professionals, gallerists, collectors and buyers.
Please read Monica’s Artist Biography and Artist Statement below as she describes her history and inspiration in her own words. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see her exhibition.
If you are interested in purchasing any of these award-winning pieces, or to see more of Monica’s work, please visit her website.
Also, please visit Fusion Art’s YouTube Channel to see Monica’s Solo Art Exhibition Video.
Thank you to all the artists who participated in the Artist Spotlight competition and congratulations to Monica and the other Artist Spotlight winning artists.
Artist Biography
Monica Lim is a best-selling author, blogger and runs her own copywriting agency. Art completely took her by surprise when facing a lockdown in May 2020 due to Covid-19, she decided to pick up a marker. What was merely supposed to be a form of distraction exploded into a full-blown love affair with colour.
The kaleidoscope of rich, vibrant hues makes her heart dance. While she did doodle and create some art pieces as a teenager, it was an occasional leisure activity and not a serious endeavour. With no formal art training, Monica learned from watching art tutorials on YouTube, and honed her skills with daily practice and a ton of experimentation.
Dedicating her new-found gift to God, she decided to pay it forward by selling her artwork and taking on pet portrait commissions to raise funds for charity. As of October 2021, slightly over a year since she embarked on her art journey, she has raised more than S$13,000 for migrant workers, the elderly, the poor and the marginalized in Singapore.
In June 2021, two of Monica’s paintings won Special Merit Awards in the 11th Annual Animals Art Competition, organized by Light Space Time, an online gallery in California. The competition attracted 895 entries from 29 countries. The following month, she received news that her artworks had garnered awards in another two competitions—an Honorable Mention (placing her among the top 20 artists) and a Special Merit Award for the “555 Special” competition, which attracted 1,437 entries from 31 countries; and an Honorable Mention for Art Show International’s 2nd Animal Contest.
Monica’s preferred media are pastels, oil pastels, coloured pencils and alcohol markers. She enjoys painting a variety of subjects, predominantly animals. All in vivid, unadulterated colour, of course.
Artist Statement
It’s funny…in real life, I’m an introvert happy not to draw attention to myself. Yet in paintings, I shun shades of grey and gravitate towards bright, gaudy shades that make the world look like it’s in Taylor Swift’s ME! music video. That’s how my love affair with pastels started. I didn’t think I would like them much, especially the very soft ones. It’s messy and the pastel dust settles into every crevice of your room. But oh man, the colour. The intensity of soft pastel hues is just incredible. The yellows are blindingly yellow, the blues look like you’re in Smurf-ville. The lights glow, and the darks give such a depth to the paintings.
When I discovered my affinity for painting animals, I knew that I didn’t want to just paint animals or realistic animals, but animals through a technicolour lens. Some people have asked me how I “see” colour in animals. It’s not a magical ability. At first, it was a mechanical process, deliberately substituting colours to see what works. There were many failed experiments.
But over time, it became more intuitive and now when I see brown fur, I don’t even “see” brown any more, I see purple. Deep browns are a cooler purple and red browns are more magenta. What’s more important is to make sure the values are right – the darks are dark enough and lights light enough, so there’s contrast. I paint a variety of subjects but animals will always have a special place in my heart as they remind me of the sheer magnificence of God’s creatures. I can see their souls through their eyes, which I try to capture in my paintings. My art journey has been relatively short, only since May 2020, but it has opened up a new colourful chapter in my life, for which I am exceedingly grateful.
