The Paintings
Every Painting Holds a Story
Each piece begins in ritual and is built layer by layer: yoga figures, plant shadows, vivid colour, and animal symbolism. Meet the paintings one at a time, then read the full artist statement below.
Shadow Work
In psychology, shadow work means taking a closer look at your unconscious mind to reveal what you have kept hidden. Monica painted the shadows cast by her own house plants into organic, leafy shapes, and at the centre a female figure holds Tree Pose. A meditation on yoga, the root chakra, growth, and green.
This original now lives with a collector.
Voice Meets Truth
A figure stands in tree pose while gold geometric shapes create chaos around her, demanding attention and space. A bird marks her voice. A transparent rabbit signals a past truth, present but weaker than her focus now. An abstract self portrait, grounded in new beliefs.
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PH Balanced
Bright, vibrant colour shows the beauty and power of embracing who you are. Inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s famous flower paintings, this piece takes a bolder approach, openly celebrating the nude form and body positivity. It is about new-age feminism: empowerment, natural beauty, and the freedom to be yourself.
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Fiercely Resting
Inspired by the resting Crocodile Pose in yoga and the quiet strength of crocodiles. She doesn’t chase. She doesn’t explain. She waits, she watches. A fierce celebration of individuality, power, and survival, layered in textured greens. Stillness is power.
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Rooted & Rising
Root down to rise up: a concept shared by CBT and yoga. A figure in Tree Pose grows six branches and one fallen leaf, together the seven chakras. The fallen leaf is the root chakra: trust shaken as laws keep limiting women’s choices over their own bodies and education.
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The Feminist
Inspired by the 2004 March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC, where a large, diverse crowd wore t-shirts reading “This is what a feminist looks like.”
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Dreamscape
A figure lunges across clouds, hair streaming behind her like wings. More dream than reality: who she wants to become, steady, open, and weightless.
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Heart-Minded
Inspired by the yoga poses we call heart openers, and the liberating feeling of working through difficult times with an open mind.
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Manifest
Only 12 × 12”, and still making a powerful impact in the room. A female figure who looks like no one in particular, yet embodies strong feminine energy: strong, light, and airy, in flow with the universe.
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Artist Statement
I work in mixed media to create layered paintings that explore embodiment, feminist themes, and the psychology of healing. Female figures in yoga poses appear throughout my work as archetypes rather than portraits: forms of introspection, tension, release, and negotiation. These figures sit alongside plant shadows, vivid colour, and animal symbolism, reflecting the relationship between internal emotion and the external environments we move through.
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My process begins in ritual. Journaling, meditation, and drawing help me settle into honesty before the first mark is made. The emotional entry point is rarely calm; I often start painting after grief, anger, or overwhelm has cracked something open. Creating becomes the way I stay in my body, and the slow, layered method grounds me.
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Each painting is built through repeated acts of observation and adjustment. I think through every layer, stare for long stretches, and question every shift in texture, colour, or symbol. Mixed media allows for playfulness when the emotional weight is heavy, giving me room to move between control and surrender. My mixed media work combines pencil crayon, ink, acrylic paint, collage, and moulding materials.
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Shadow work shapes the entire process, both emotionally and visually. Emotionally, it asks me to acknowledge the parts of myself I once avoided: anger, softness, grief, shame, fear, and the desire to feel whole. Visually, it emerges through literal shadows, houseplant silhouettes, overlooked details, and forms that slip in and out of focus. The act of layering becomes a practice of integrating what’s hidden, transforming discomfort into a visual language.
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My work sits at the intersection of feminism, embodiment, and emotional restoration. I’m interested in how women hold complexity, how healing moves through the body, and how art can mirror the quiet parts of ourselves we are still learning to accept.
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What may appear playful on the surface often comes from the effort to reclaim joy after losing it. These paintings are not about presenting a polished version of healing. They record the returning, the rebuilding, the moments of clarity that arrive after the hardest days.
At its core, my work creates space for pause. A breath. A moment of recognition. It is an invitation to return to yourself, to feel without explanation, and to meet the parts of your becoming that rarely get a voice.
Meet the Artist
Monica Brinkman
Monica Brinkman is a Canadian artist who paints the part of her story that came after “I’m not doing this anymore.”
Her textured, symbolic paintings reflect the moments she thought she carried alone: the shame-filled quiet undoing, the very slow returning, and the unsteady rise back into who she really is.
Until recently, her studio was at The Cotton Factory in Hamilton. Today she works from her home studio in Welland, Ontario, exhibits across the Niagara region and the Greater Toronto Area, and speaks and shows her work across Canada.
Her work continues to resonate with collectors seeking emotionally intelligent art that doesn’t just decorate a room, but quietly supports the person standing in front of it.
- 15% donatedOf all sales, to human rights causes
- 14+ yearsOf yoga practice, now training to teach
- Art + AccountingDouble degree
- Canadian artistHome studio in Welland, showing across Canada
Read Monica’s full story
Born and raised in Sarnia, a small town in Ontario, Monica grew up without the constant hum of the internet or a smartphone. Creativity became her natural outlet, and her mother made sure it stayed that way. As the youngest of three with two older brothers, Monica was quietly handed what she now recognizes as feminist tools long before she had a word for them: have your own money, do what you love instead of what you’re told, and you’re allowed to say no.
Her mother and Nana, who moved in when Monica was six, also shared unfiltered stories about the way male co-workers, bosses, and strangers had treated them: near-abductions, violence at work, and everyday violations that still exist for women today. They did their best to prepare her, but Monica, like so many women, still encountered her own versions of those stories through co-workers, strangers, and partners.
In 2019, at 26, she left an abusive relationship and the life that came with it. Starting again felt like beginning a second life inside the same body. During that time, Monica found herself in daily conversations with women, and a pattern became painfully clear: the facts of each story were different, but the themes were the same. Through the adversity of simply existing as a woman, she found a community of women who were tired, resilient, and still choosing to rise.
FeministArt.ca was born in 2022 out of that season of healing and re-rooting. Art became the place where Monica relearned her own voice, through layered colour, emotional honesty, and the freedom to get messy (literally and emotionally). Her sobriety deepened that process even further, trading old coping mechanisms for hours lost in her sketchbook, letting imagination become the escape that helped her heal instead of the habits that once numbed her.
Outside the canvas, Monica has been practicing yoga for over fourteen years and is currently training to become a yoga instructor. She also holds a double degree in Art and Accounting, a combination that reflects both her practical roots and her refusal to abandon what she loves.
Through FeministArt.ca, Monica donates 15% of all sales to human rights causes, weaving activism into the structure of her practice rather than treating it as an afterthought. Beyond the studio, she’s an herbal tea enthusiast, passionate yogi, and devoted human to Olive Branch, the golden doodle who unofficially runs the space.
What My Collectors Are Saying
Memberships, exhibitions, and places Monica’s work has been shown
New work, print drops, studio notes and the occasional thing I cannot stop thinking about.