Monica Rohan creates intriguing self-portraits, depicting figures engulfed in their vivid settings and surrounds. Intricately detailed, her paintings and drawings are playful and narrative-driven, conveying her sense of imagination; in Rohan’s works, viewers can imagine taking cover under a pile of laundry or climbing walls filled with ivy. Dreamy and familiar, Rohan’s delicate detail and style draw the viewer into her imaginary world.
Rohan's carefully composed paintings reveal a love of pattern, detail and colour. Her emotive patterns are drawn from everyday images such as foliage and clothing and suggest a psychological depth that often appears as a struggle or a surrender between the figures and their surrounds. Blending realism and abstraction, the details in Rohan's paintings are all-consuming, pushed towards the limits of reality. Initially presenting as whimiscal, closer engagement reveals Rohan's depiction of human fragility and isolation in her work.
Rohan graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours from Queensland College of Art in 2010. She has since exhibited in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. In 2016, Rohan was selected as a finalist in the prestigious Archibald Prize in her first attempt. Her work is held in private and public collections in Australia, including Artbank, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, the University of Queensland Art Museum, Mater Children’s Hospital and the Griffith University Collection.
