Mona Shahid is a Toronto-based painter currently pursuing her master’s of Fine Arts in the Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. In addition, she is a course instructor of basic painting at the undergraduate level. She had decided to pursue her graduate degree after ten years of painting and exhibiting professionally, primarily in Canada, for the main reason of becoming an art educator. Her undergraduate studies were completed at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, Canada, where she had been living since her graduation in 1992. During her last year of study at OCAD, Mona was part of an off-campus program in Florence, Italy, where she was introduced to encaustic, which she has been using as a primary medium since that time. Mona later to Italy to pursue an intensive studio in the technique of fresco painting.

Using portraiture as a vehicle, Mona Shahid’s paintings can be described as investigations of the human condition; they are psychological spaces occupied by serene, ambiguous and ethereal figures. She uses photography as a starting point, images of friends, colleagues, and, occasionally, strangers as catalysts to address her profound interests in quiet states of being and the emotional contributions that may pass from one person to another. They have been described as psychological mug shots and physiognomic studies, as well as honest, vulnerable and universal images, co-dependent upon peace and misery.

Mona Shahid is represented by Edward Day Gallery in Toronto, Robert Kidd Gallery in Birmingham, Michigan, and Vanderleelie Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta.

Mona Shahid, 2004.