PANDORA MOND

​When an artist wants to convey their emotional response to their subject – and perhaps elicit an emotional response from anyone looking at the work – then precise representation must give way to the artist’s interpretation, taking the work beyond the visual basics. In her paintings of horses Pandora Mond conveys the energy and movement of the animals by means of her expressive application of the medium, which paradoxically lends the animals an ethereal quality while at the same time rooting their real substance and form in our consciousness by means of the unmistakable line of a knee, a breastbone, an eyelid or the bone of a brow.
  Her solitary trees too, possess a powerful physical presence. Not simply because of the sheer size of each canvas and the iconic nature of their presentation, but because their natural surface becomes a vehicle for Mond’s exploration of the surface quality of the paint. In this way each image is given character and is brought to life. Each painting amounts to much more than simply the sum of its parts, because Mond’s response to her subject bestows an expression and energy that exist not because of what she paints, but how.

-Frieda Hughes

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