Monica Deac is a Romanian-born Canadian contemporary abstract artist based in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia.

Her practice is rooted in an enduring fascination with nature, material surfaces, light and the traces left by time. Through layers of pigment and texture, she creates paintings that move between the recognizable and the abstract, exploring accumulation, erosion, memory and transformation.

Alongside her artistic practice, Deac holds a Master's degree in Occupational Therapy and has an extensive professional background in the field. Her work with people and her understanding of human experience, adaptation and the environments we inhabit have contributed to the perspective she brings to her artistic practice.

Her current body of work, Traces of Time, brings these investigations together through tactile surfaces, fragmented forms, fissures and passages of light, inviting the viewer to encounter each painting not simply as an image, but as a surface carrying its own history.
With an artistic career spanning more than two decades, Deac has exhibited in Canada, the United States and Romania, including exhibitions in Vancouver, New York and Sibiu. Her exhibition history encompasses solo and group presentations, as well as participation in contemporary art and design events reflecting an ongoing presence in the contemporary art community.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My work explores time, memory and impermanence through layered, tactile surfaces.
I am drawn to surfaces transformed by time, the forest floor, water, weathered trees, stone and eroded walls. What may first appear to be a boundary often becomes a threshold: a surface concealing another world, another history, another layer of life. This tension between what is visible and what lies beyond gives my paintings their sense of mystery.
My process mirrors this idea. Using layers of pigment and texture, I build, conceal, scrape, erode and reveal. Each intervention transforms what came before. Forms disappear beneath new layers and fragments unexpectedly resurface, carrying traces of their previous existence. The artwork becomes an archaeology of memory.
I am not simply depicting impermanence; the paintings are created through it.
Time becomes accumulation, erosion, disappearance and rediscovery. Cracks become openings. Buried colour becomes memory. Increasingly, vertical fissures and passages of light emerge through the surfaces, suggesting that beyond what appears solid or finite, something continues.
My artwork exists between landscape and abstraction, the familiar and the unknown. They invite the viewer to look beyond the surface and discover what remains, what has changed, and what is beginning to emerge.