Monika Toplev

MONIKA TOPLEV lives and works in Salzburg, where she also runs her own gallery in the Kaigasse. After an early artistic influence and a longer, family-oriented stage of life, she has devoted herself consistently to painting for more than ten years.

Her works emerge through a multi-layered process using acrylic, ink, and collage, often on coarse or fine-textured surfaces such as canvas, wood, or paper. The application of color and use of materials are intuitive yet precise – marked by a particular sensitivity for depth of color, rhythm, and structure. Toplev’s themes revolve around nature, change, memory, and connectedness. Her paintings arise in the tension between feeling and form, between contemplation and bold creation.

She presents vibrant, large-scale works that grow in layers and are shaped by organic processes as well as close observation of nature. She places great value on a mindful use of resources: leftover paint, rinse water from brushes, or seemingly unusable materials are deliberately integrated into the creative process – nothing is to be wasted.

The forms and rhythms of nature are an inexhaustible source of inspiration for her. She wonders: Why do so many people find certain forms or color combinations beautiful or soothing? What is contained in them that connects, calms, or moves us? Can we learn from the structures of nature – about balance, transformation, or the quiet interplay of opposites?

Although she leaves these questions open, she is accompanied by a hope: that a painting can be more than pure aesthetics. Can an artwork change something within a person? Can art – without pathos but with depth – contribute to making the world a little more humane, connected, or awake? And what does it mean for a society when people are touched – by color, by form, by a quiet moment before a painting?