12x12, acrylic ink on wood panel
 
This beautifully intricate series explores our ability to access the memories of our childhood and our path through life from there. Belitz illustrates the deep sentimentality arrising from our memories of a simpler time; reading in the shade of a giant tree, playing games, swinging, playing in a tree house. This is a time that many of us long for, when someone else was in charge of keeping us safe, making meals and our time was nealry carefree. 
 
Monique Belitz was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands. She is a graduate of the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich (BFA) and the University of New Mexico ( MFA). She fell in love with the Southwest decades ago and was able to move here permanently in 2018. Much of her work is a celebration of the joy and privelege of living in a place that you belong.
 
These pieces utilize a process combining painting and drawing with acrylic ink (a loose acrylic medium that comes in a jar and is applied with a fine dip-pen) on wooden cradled boards. They are mental “snapshots” of the ever changing quality of light, color and mood of vistas and interior landscapes Belitz observes. Applying an innovative sequence of techniques, she first blocks in the main shapes with a brush, then uses pen and ink to overlay the painting with patterns describing various surface qualities in fine detail.