The Art of Taking Up Space

Artist Monica Shulman, a Latina woman with long dark hair, stands in front of colorful abstract paintings. Her white shirt and black pants are splattered with paint.

Interview by Jennifer Cooper
Photography by Living Notes Studio

“I think as women we have to support each other in any way we can and encourage each other to take up space no matter where we find ourselves in both our personal and professional lives.”

Artist Monica Shulman’s Hudson Valley studio is bright, airy, and filled with canvases that explode with color. It feels, in a word, expansive. In fact, many of her paintings are so large that Shulman needs to pull out a ladder to work on them.

Shulman works in abstract, creating movement through bold brush strokes that feel like you’re about to fall into a dream. Things are swirling and colorful, and almost tangible but not quite. It reminds me of the part of my mind where I believe anything is possible.

The other thing about Shulman’s paintings: they’re hard to ignore. In fact, Shulman herself is hard to ignore. Her pop of red lipstick reflects the color that surrounds her. I smile thinking about the boldness of it all. Maybe because I’m approaching the era that I’m supposed to start fading, and yet feel like I’m just getting started.

Fancy, an ad agency working to change the culture of advertising, polled women over 40 and found that the group overwhelmingly felt younger, sexier, and cooler than they ever expected.

That’s wonderful!

Yet, inherent in that finding is the idea that we’re surprised we should feel so good. But why shouldn’t we? So many of us are finally ready to take up the space we’ve been afraid to inhabit. Which brings me back to the paintings hanging on the wall behind Monica Shulman’s statuesque figure. They definitely fill the room.

I recently spoke with Shulman about her work, the messages thrown at us about beauty, what aging gracefully actually means, and the art of taking up all the damn space we want.

Your work is expressive, evocative, and many are quite large! I’m not sure if it’s intended but I think your work says something about taking up space. Talk to me about the boldness behind your work, especially as a self-taught artist.

I create stories and explore multiple themes with my work and the idea of “taking up space” is definitely prominent. Making the decision to do what I’m doing and carve this career out for myself was a huge challenge mostly due to my own insecurities and imposter syndrome but it’s something that has organically gotten easier over time.

In general there’s a history of gender inequity in the art world and women artists and women identifying artists are vastly underrepresented by museums, galleries, and auction houses, so just working in this field is complicated because it can feel like a struggle to be seen and to get your work in front of people.

Was this idea of taking up space a challenge or did it come naturally to you?

I think as women we have to support each other in any way we can and encourage each other to take up space no matter where we find ourselves in both our personal and professional lives.

As a Latina woman, and as someone who is self-taught, I’ve always been trying to make my way and I’ve had to wing it and just learn as I went along, but whenever I’ve focused on working and consistently putting myself out there, opportunities that were meant for me, came to me. I had always wished I had gone to school for more training, but being self-taught is something I’m very proud of. It’s helped me learn that there are many paths for getting where you want to go and to take up the space you’re meant to have.

That’s a huge lesson.

I used to think that I had to shout to be heard, but that was my own insecurity and personal triggers getting the best of me. I don’t feel like I have to do that anymore. I think as an artist, as a mother, and all the other ways that I identify, the process, the doing, and the thinking about the work and my task is what is most important and this is a way that I take up space.

But while I do love scale and really enjoy making large format works, I think you can make a big statement with smaller works. There is a lesson in that for me, too. The art is still expressive and evocative whether it takes up an entire wall in a space or sits on a shelf. Its impact is more about the story and the person telling it.

You’re active on social media and share a lot of your art. You also share snapshots of your family and your life as a mom. Do you feel that you integrate all the sides of yourself in every moment, or do you find it’s easier to compartmentalize? For instance, when you’re in the mom role, you’re 'all in' on being a parent, and when you’re in the studio you’re all in on being an artist.

I stopped trying to compartmentalize all the parts of me. I incorrectly thought I needed to do that and it’s simply not possible. When you know better hopefully you do better, and now I know that all the parts of who I am and how I identify roll into each other and inform each other.

So for me, there’s no way to be other than “all in” on being a mother and “all in” on being a wife, artist, daughter, sister, friend, etc. I don’t always get it right, but I don’t know how to separate these parts. I think that everyone is a puzzle made up of pieces collected over time.

Speaking of these pieces collected over time, one of your pieces is being a first-generation American of Cuban and Argentine descent. Does that impact your work?

Being a first-gen American is an enormous part of my identity and it would be impossible for it not to impact my work. I grew up straddling multiple cultures and there was a lot I’m still constantly learning about how that shaped me. It’s a piece of my puzzle.

So much of my vision, and point of view as an artist, is rooted in storytelling, the human condition, identity, and self-reflection. Intimately knowing where and who I come from, where I hope to be going, and my legacy, is a way I access that.

A dark-haired latina artist sits at a desk behind a row of paintbrushes and sketches an orange and blue woman in her notebook.

How big a role does intuition play in your life/work?

It’s a really nuanced and layered process that usually comes down to whatever situation or moment I’m in, but I’ve always gotten into trouble when I’ve ignored my gut. I often try to channel those feelings into my work.

How so?

There are no rules inside my studio. Outside the studio, I’d say I always follow my intuition but I’m also very much a planner and I can’t escape that because it brings me a sense of order and calm. If my intuition and my need for order and certainty are at odds, my intuition, after some over-thinking, usually wins.

When I was younger I always preferred plans and routines because I liked knowing what came next since there is comfort and safety in that. But now, I’ve taken a lot of professional and personal risks and I’m proud of that because I know I was scared and nervous while doing it!

But I’m really proud of how I’ve learned to trust myself, own who I am, and push past my anxiety so that I can trust my intuition, have personal boundaries, honor myself and my path, and just live a more joyful life in general.

I don’t know if that self-trust has come with age, having a supportive partner at home, life experience, parenting or what, but absolutely my work as an intuitive painter has helped me to grow because it’s taught me it’s ok to not know things.

Not knowing things though can lead to fear and anxiety. How do you manage that?

I see fear as a sort of partner that I have to live with and it makes things less daunting to acknowledge it and just go from there. I’m also lucky because my husband is less conservative when it comes to fear and he’s pushed us, and pushed me, in ways that I didn’t even know I needed.

So you’re more ready to dive in now than you were when you were younger?

I’ve accepted that I learn best through experimentation. And I also accept that it’s ok to be nervous or scared. Fear is an important emotion and I’m not interested in suppressing it. Plus, it can also be exciting and very motivating.

What are your views on aging? Are you leaning into getting older or is it more complicated?

Let me start by saying, I love the clarity and growth that has come with age. I don’t think about age as something to be scared of or worried about, but I’ll admit I obsess about the passage of time.

I see it most with my kids. Everything feels like it’s happening in a blink with them and I feel like I can’t process it quickly enough. I take that feeling to my canvas a lot.

“I love the clarity and growth that has come with age. I don’t think about age as something to be scared of or worried about, but I’ll admit I obsess about the passage of time.”

Kids do have a way of marking the passage of time in a very real way. Here they are growing up and I feel like I am the same. But I’m definitely not the same person I was when I was in my 20s or even 30s. Parts of me are, but not all of me is. You know?

I think about my children’s milestones and how fast they’re growing and that part does make the idea of aging harder. I want to live forever for my family.

But yes, I love my age now and all of the wisdom that has come with it. I still make plenty of mistakes but I wouldn’t trade 45 for 25 not even for a second. In that regard I absolutely lean in to getting older.

What about aging when it comes to beauty standards?

That piece is more complicated for me. While I embrace the idea of aging and all that it gives us, I think we should get to define what that means for ourselves. So I guess I would say I like the clarity and sense of peace I feel on the inside, but I could do without the random aches, the wrinkles and the gray hair.

It does seem that the body requires a bit more attention as we get older.

I work hard to take care of my skin, my body, and my mind and that really helps my overall mental and physical health. I buy all the products, I wear spf daily, color my roots and get highlights, I get botox, try to eat well, exercise daily on my Peloton or Jumpsport trampoline, and go to therapy.

I do all of these things simply because I like to do them, they make me happy, and I enjoy doing them. I also like the way I look and feel on the inside and outside when I do and I won’t apologize for that.

So the term aging gracefully, for you, means…

A person can age gracefully and still care about those things without being obsessive. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Maybe my choices “keep me young” even though I don’t “feel old”—whatever that means—but either way, they’re my choices and I dictate them.

Society complicates things for us, especially as women, because we are consistently fed unhealthy standards and we are always being told what we should do, how we should look and who we should be rather than letting people just be who and what they want on their own terms.

This is a process for me that I work on and think about a lot.

This isn’t something I’ve talked about much, but I’ve lost 25 pounds in the last two years. I was carrying excess weight from a combination of things including: the pandemic; residual issues from multiple fertility treatments; leftover baby weight; an abdominal surgery where I almost lost an ovary; a terrible issue in my small intestine that completely killed my gut biome and was affecting every aspect of my life and caused depression, and anxiety.

What helped you feel better?

I took the slower pace of the lockdown and the months that followed to really look at everything in my life and heal and grow. Part of that was shedding the weight of my own and other people’s expectations as well as the physical weight.

I think weight is something a lot of us think about—especially as a generation who grew up on those “weight-loss” ads—but we don’t necessarily talk it about because we got some weird messaging around it all.

I agree. I've never felt better, but it's not about the actual pounds. Yes, I like the way I look, but the way I feel far outweighs any number on a scale. That’s the part that’s harder to see in a two dimensional way through our screens, but then what’s on the inside is something I reserve for myself and my small circle.

Not to ask a cliche question, but…What’s something you wished you would have known when you were younger?

It’s a long list but there are two big main things. First, that it doesn’t matter what other people think about you and it’s a waste of time to worry about it. You know your truth. Period. Second, I wished I would have learned about emotional regulation and how to do it. But therapy helped give me the tools to get here.

Therapy is super helpful that way. On the flip side of the last question, what’s something you hope you will have learned when you’re older?

That life doesn’t have to be so complicated and things worth doing take time. That you can find your own joys, go after your dreams and goals, live your truth, stop comparing yourself to other people, and live in a state of love and peace rather than anxiety.

Okay, what’s something that holds you back?

Fear of failure sometimes holds me back, but not enough to not try. At least, not anymore. I don’t think we have limits, but we can talk ourselves out of things when they feel scary.

You mentioned imposter syndrome earlier...

Imposter syndrome is real, but it’s okay to not know what you’re doing and to take the time to figure it out because eventually you will. Change is the only constant and this is an everyday process that is like a muscle that needs to be worked out. I think it’s a lifelong commitment.

That’s a great observation. It’s a lifelong commitment. What’s something that keeps you moving forward?

My family. They’re my anchor and at the core of every single thing I do.

What’s something you wished more people asked you?

I think we would be kinder and more empathetic as a society in general if we simply asked each other, “How are you…really?”

You can follow Monica on instagram @monicashulman and find more of her work on her site monicashulman.com.