Claudia Ongaro’s recent paintings invite us to experience her works as contemplations. A collection that presents Ongaro’s engagement with a process of subtle layered and meditative painting.

Each work describes the totality of one unique meditation. The nuance and feeling of its psychic content suggested in a depth of intense colour and yet within a restrained and almost ascetic sparseness of form. The works emerge as a conversation between the deeply personal and the universal. An abstract expressive language of colour and emotion within a monastic discipline of minimalist form, stillness and silence.

Claudia Ongaro was born in 1972 in Johannesburg. She began her studies in Fine Art in 1991 at Wits University. Her path of exploration then expanded to design. This led her to London, where she lived for several years. From there her client base expanded internationally, including projects in Paris, Athens and the Bahamas. In 2006 she returned to Cape Town and set up her own art and design studio. Her work has been featured extensively in the press and she has received awards in the field of collectable design.

Almost two decades after her formal studies in art began at the age of 17, Ongaro marked a return to Fine Art. This step took the form of a relief paper cut sculptural piece entitled ‘Mind Like Water’ - the first edition exhibited in 2010. Since then it has travelled internationally, exhibited in Cape Town, London and Paris and now editions form part of private collections around the world.

Ongaro’s current work expands the her focus on consciousness development, through the medium of painting as a meditative and contemplative practice.