Biography

Mena Quilici is an acrylic painter who finally found her muse after retirement in 2004. As a child in Oakland, California she enjoyed art classes through local museums and art centers but drifted away from any formal art education as she attempted to “grow up” and do as expected. While intermittently exploring various artistic endeavors between college, children, hippie adventures and state service employment, she didn’t fully reclaim her creativity and passion for art until retirement in Port Townsend. Here she found she didn’t need to “grow up” and she enthusiastically jumped into the creative process.

Mena has studied with local artists Max Grover and Linda Larsen. Her colorful, often whimsical paintings hang in Port Townsend businesses and collectors homes in California, Oregon and Washington. Her work has been featured on the cover of the Port Townsend Leader newspaper’s art section and also juried in to a Northwind Arts Alliance Small Expressions show. She loves when her colorful paintings mysteriously transform themselves in the creative conversation between art and artist, often catching her by surprise and making her laugh.

2008 April Show – Belltower Arts, Port Townsend, WA
2007 Cover art for The Leader newspaper arts section
2006 Small Expressions juried show, Northwind Arts, Port Townsend, WA

 

Artist’s Statement

Painting is surprising, bewildering, and wondrously fun, and is sometimes an intensely difficult relationship between a blank canvas and my ideas. I love the way the colorful paint flows off of my brush and interacts with the forms, colors and textures on the canvas to surprise me with a painting. A plein air scene bursts to life, expressing the landscape in front of me in saturated colors and forms that energize, surprise and astonish me. A mundane painting of a cat transforms itself from realism to a burst of laughter as the cat’s expression, hue or twisted form takes over the painting. No matter where I think I’m going, at some point the painting manages to wrest control and astound me!

I work in acrylics because I love the rich, juicy paint and how I can quickly work and rework the problems out of a painting through layer over layer until the colors, forms and composition express themselves fully. I find that acrylics are a forgiving partner in my relationship between painter and painting.



Contact Mena:: chermena@cablespeed.com