MUNTHE ART MONDAY:
Ali Pilli

Please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do.

I’m Ali Pilli, a painter based in Toronto, Canada. My work explores human psychology through colour, design, and our connection to the world around us. I’m interested in creating paintings that feel both serene and playful, where colour can shift between something very soft and something much more visceral. I work in layers on raw canvas, allowing washes, chalk, and colour to build a sense of mood and atmosphere while still leaving room for chance and movement.

For me, painting is really about inviting audiences to take note of their own psychological transcendence as they view my work. Paintings acting as a place where audiences can meet in contradiction and learn to embrace life's awe inspiring simplicity and vast complexity. I’m interested in that space between control and spontaneity, creating compositions that feel considered, but still retain something unpredictable and alive. The paintings can be quiet, but I don’t want them to disappear into the background; I want them to have a presence and hold a room.

What has been the most challenging aspect of being a woman in the arts?

For me, one of the biggest challenges has been learning to trust my own authority. In my own career, I’ve had to learn that having boundaries and a strong artistic point of view isn't difficult; it’s part of taking your practice seriously.

In a strange way, I think that uncertainty is also where some of the most interesting work comes from. I don't want to know exactly what a painting will become before I begin it. I want there to be room for discovery. Learning to protect that space has probably been one of the most important parts of becoming an artist.

What would you like people to notice in your artwork?

I'm interested in the way colour can trigger something almost instinctive,memory, atmosphere, desire, calm, nostalgia, without giving the viewer a fixed narrative.

I also want people to notice the tension between the softness of the materials and the presence of the compositions. The raw canvas, bleeding colour, chalk, and imperfect edges give the paintings a certain vulnerability, while the larger forms and relationships between colours give them weight.

I'm interested in making paintings that can initially feel effortless or beautiful, but reveal more the longer you spend with them.

If someone walks away remembering a particular colour, a feeling, or the way a painting changed the atmosphere of a room, that's meaningful to me. I want the work to stay with them after they've left it.

Could you explain more about how being a woman has affected your career?

Being a woman has definitely shaped the way I experience the art world, although I don’t think of my work as being exclusively about femininity. I’m interested in femininity as something that can be both soft and powerful, playful and serious, restrained and completely instinctive.

I think being a woman has also made me particularly conscious of the expectations placed on us, such as being accommodating, agreeable, or to make ourselves smaller. I’ve become much more interested in moving away from those expectations and trusting my own instincts, both personally and creatively. I’m less interested in fitting into an existing idea, or what a painting should be, and more interested in developing a life and visual language that feels distinctly my own.

Can you name some other female artists that inspire you and explain why?

Four women artists I continually return to are Helen Frankenthaler, Kristen Giorgi, Mary Blair, and Anna Weyant. I’m drawn to Frankenthaler’s intuitive relationship with raw canvas and colour, particularly the balance between intention and allowing the materials to take on a life of their own. Kristen Giorgi inspires me through her sensitivity to colour, space, and atmosphere, while Mary Blair’s imaginative and unexpected use of colour reminds me of the importance of play. I’m also drawn to Anna Weyant’s ability to combine beauty and elegance with something psychologically more complex. What connects all four for me is their ability to develop a visual language that feels unmistakably their own, which is ultimately what I’m striving for in my own work, to create paintings that are recognizable not because they follow a formula, but because they come from a particular way of seeing.