Michelle Mongan is a San Francisco-based figurative artist whose work includes printmaking, paintings, and drawings. Her figures have been described by Sasha Chebil of The Daily Californian as “twisted,” “delicate,” falling “in undefined lines” and having “limbs that fade into nothingness.”
The seeds for Mongan’s artistic future were planted in college. While majoring in accounting, she took a drawing class and found the freedom and creativity that drawing provided to be a liberating gift from the analytical and precise nature of the accounting program. In 2005, after years of working in the accounting field, Mongan returned to art and, again, found it to provide a sense of balance in her life. Since 2005, she has been an artist and studied in San Francisco one-on-one and in small groups with the following brilliant San Francisco artists: Felix Macnee (painting and drawing), Peggy Gyulai (drawing), Jeremy Sutton (drawing), Michael Markowitz (drawing), and Katie Gilmartin (printmaking).
In 2012, Mongan ended a successful accounting career and began focusing on endeavors that she describes as being more “soul enriching,” including art, travel and volunteer work. She began publicly exhibiting her work in 2013 during San Francisco’s Fall Open Studios.
After traveling to Cuba in 2013 and 2014 and visiting the Sociedad Gráfica de Cienfuegos, in 2015 Mongan began studying printmaking under the direction of Cuban artist Rafael Cáceres, one of the Founders and the Director of the Sociedad Gráfica de Cienfuegos. She is incredibly honored by this rare opportunity and has been further honored to return in 2016-2019 working directly with Cuban artists Cáceres, Alexander Cárdenas and Manuel Quesada.
In 2018, Mongan became a member of City Art Cooperative Gallery in San Francisco, CA where she exhibits her printmaking in select monthly group exhibitions.
In 2019, Mongan assisted one of 38 artists who were selected to paint murals covering 10,052 square feet at the Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco, CA.
In 2021, Mongan became a member of San Francisco Women Artists Gallery in San Francisco, CA.
Mongan’s work is influenced, in part, by: her teachers’ techniques, Belkis Ayón’s collagraphs, da Vinci’s drawings, Matisse’s lines, Schiele’s nudes, van Gogh’s swirls, Renoir’s eyes, Morisot’s warmth, Kahlo’s pain, and Nature’s crisis.
Mongan has donated numerous pieces of her artwork to local non-profit organizations’ fundraising auctions including: Walk SF, The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Art for AIDS, and Maitri Compassionate Care where she has been a regular volunteer and also served on the Finance Committee from 2015-2017.
Mongan has many private collectors in Cuba, Iceland, France, and the United States.
