Mandie Colangelo grew up in Arizona in a family where creativity and drive ran side by side. Her father built one of the most storied careers in American sports, but Mandie's world was shaped by something different, a lifelong need to make things.
She painted as a little girl, wrote music, designed a custom home and did remodels, spent a time doing photography and graphic design, and eventually, built her businesses in fashion and design and jewelry before finding her way back to the canvas.
For years, annual visits to Carmel-by-the-Sea brought her into the world of fine art. She walked the galleries, looked at the work, absorbed the culture of the place without quite knowing it was shaping her.
When a significant personal transition arrived, she picked up a brush again. What began as a way to process emotion became something she couldn't stop. Nearly a decade later, the body of work she has built is substantial, restless, and deeply felt.
Colangelo works in the tradition of abstract expressionism, where the act of painting is inseparable from the emotion behind it. She works with street inks, acrylic, resin, pigment powders, spray paint, fabric, and collage, sometimes all at once, letting the materials find their own logic on the canvas. In some works a single luminous form, a blazing yellow-green mass or a deep cobalt pool, floats against a ground that breathes and shifts around it, suggesting the surface of a planet no one has named yet. In others the entire surface erupts: reds and oranges surge against electric blues, gold threads through atmospheric fields, a white flower appears in the middle of what might be a storm or a celebration. The smaller works range from raw and intense to soft and dreamlike, some resembling something geological, something ancient, and at the same time utterly new.
Her paintings range widely in scale and mood but share a consistent emotional directness. Color is never decorative, it carries weight. The reds mean something. The blues hold something. The gold that runs through so many works feels less like embellishment than like light breaking through.
As she puts it, her paintings are attempts to make sense of the world, to sit with its dualities, its beauty, its difficulty, and release what words cannot hold.
Colangelo is a mother of five, grandmother of three, and lives in Monterey, California, where she maintains her studio.
Artist Statement
"When people ask me what my work is about, I can only answer “everything!” My paintings come from my daily life, and are attempts to make sense of the world. They express my wishes and dreams for a better world, they celebrate happy occasions, my sadness and frustration, as I explore life’s dualities.
My journey as an artist began in childhood - painting, coloring, and imagining the beauty and wonder of creation. Art has always been a way for me to explore creativity, emotion, and freedom.
My work is modern and abstract, filled with vibrant color and expressive movement. Each piece is created with a sense of freedom - the freedom to let creativity flow naturally and to express emotion without limitation. I love allowing the process itself to guide the final result.
My passion for painting has been shaped by many artistic experiences throughout my life, including fashion, interior and exterior design, graphic design, photography, and building/design work. Out of all these creative outlets, painting brings me the greatest sense of peace.
More than anything, I hope my artwork inspires hope, joy, and reflection in those who experience it. My prayer is that each piece becomes a blessing to your space and a reminder of His love."
