Welcome to Monjulee Art

Monjulee: A Brief Biography

Perhaps uniquely, I am a Welsh/Malaysian/Bengali-Indian female artist! I should explain. I was born in Malaysia of Bengali-Indian parents; I moved to Wales, UK in 1994; and it is here in Wales that I began to paint in earnest and to exhibit and sell my work. But it was in India, where I lived for many years, that I first became interested in painting – inspired by the Ajanta cave paintings in Western India. Since living in Wales my husband and I have travelled in more than 90 countries, browsed and bought in many galleries and been influenced by many cultures and artists. Some of this finds expression in my work and in the selection of my paintings on this website – in the choice of subjects, but also in some cases in the intensity of colour and light that characterises many countries that are sunnier than Britain. I find inspiration in British, especially Welsh, landscapes; the town and cityscapes of Europe; the brooding density of tropical rain forests; and rivers, boats and seascapes wherever they are found – but I cannot forget the bright colours and light of Asian and tropical/sub-tropical countries and they sometimes creep into my memory and onto my palette and paper!

I am a figurative painter, but some of my work is semi-figurative and almost semi-abstract. Shapes, colour and tones excite me, and they are sometimes more readily grasped in a semi-abstract painting – but I like to tell or imply a story too and figurative work lends itself to storytelling.

I have recently ventured into oil on canvas, but I am first and foremost a water colourist – I love the “transparency” and fluency of watercolour. I like to paint the way I cook: the preparatory thought and mental planning may be long and rigorous but I then like to work quite rapidly and with freedom – drawing on memory and intuition rather than any precise “recipe.” Very few of my paintings are exactly representative of place or person; Wordsworth’s description of his approach to poetry is more apt – “emotion recollected in tranquillity”.

Taste in art is highly personal; it varies as much as we vary as people, but I hope that you will find something here that is of interest and worthy of a moment’s consideration – and pleasure.