Shared Space features work by Monique Ford and Susan Ross. For a number of years the two artists have shared a painting studio and a natural dialogue arose. Within their abstract paintings, flowing forms and idiosyncratic colors sweep, collide and settle into rich and provocative relationships.

Ford’s textured and muscular paintings engage mark-making and the materiality of paint. Movement, energy and flux are at the heart of her work. The smooth layers in Ross’ paintings simultaneously evoke movement and stillness. The relationship of color and shape in her work creates a push and pull dynamic, eliciting a rhythmic contemplative space.

Ford’s and Ross’ paintings provoke similar reflections on the ways forms occupy and push beyond the canvas. The artists both create images that feel like a “slice of life” — snapshots of something more expansive. The viewer is drawn into the intimacy of these close up “internal landscape” worlds, while the forms contained within the canvas seem to flow and extend out into the surrounding space.

Monique Ford received a BFA in drawing, painting and photography from Plattsburgh State University in 2003 and a MFA from Pratt Institute in 2006. She attended study abroad programs in Costa Rica and Italy. Ford has been exhibiting her work throughout the Northeast. She received best of show awards in Bedford, NY and The Silvermine Artist Guild in New Canaan, CT. Ford has recently shown in group shows at NURTUREart gallery and The Painting Center. Last year, she had two solo exhibitions, at The Pound Ridge Reservation and the Irvington Library Gallery. Over the last two years, her work was selected for Verge Art Fair in Miami. Ford has worked as a teaching artist at many leading organizations, such as the 92nd St Y, Bric Rotunda Gallery, Studio in a School, Free Arts NYC and the Brooklyn Historical Society. Currently, she works as the atelierista at TriBeCa Community School. Ford lives and paints in Brooklyn, NY. For more information, visit www.moniquecreate.com

Susan Ross received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a MFA from Pratt Institute, and studied painting and art history at Lorenzo de Medici Art Institute in Florence, Italy. She has exhibited her work in the Northeast, Midwest and Italy. Her work has recently been shown in group shows in NYC at The Painting Center, Denise Bibro Fine Art, and A.I.R. Gallery. Ross was awarded artist grants from the Puffin Foundation and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. Collaborating with Melissa Staiger in 2009, she co-curated and moderated an artist panel for Patterns of Growth at NURTUREart Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. In 2010, Ross and Staiger cocurated Source, an exhibition and online interview featuring seven NYC abstract painters, sponsored by PowerHouse Projects and the CUNY Center for Worker Education. Ross lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. For more information, visit www.susanrossstudio.com