Monika Marcella is a New Orleans–based artist whose work explores emotional states through hand-cut, mixed media paintings. Her figures—often women—serve as mirrors for moods, memories, and unspoken narratives, expressed through rich textures, symbolic details, and sculptural forms. She works primarily on wood or MDF, cutting each shape by hand before sealing, painting, and finishing the surface with a signature resin gloss.
Her art is deeply intuitive, rooted in the act of processing life’s emotional layers through visual storytelling. Themes of beauty, burden, softness, control, reverence, and rebellion often intertwine across her work. Drawing influence from film, photography, and personal history, Monika leans into contrast—where vulnerability lives beside boldness, and joy becomes a form of resistance.
Whether painting wildlife or building mythic female icons, her goal is the same: to give form to feeling, and to create work that invites presence before explanation. Her pieces are not quiet. They hum, they watch, and they hold space.
