About Monica
Monica Vachula is a native of
Hatfield, MA and a graduate of Smith College.
An artist who works primarily in oil on panel, she is known for her
paintings of local woodlands and farms, and farmers and their produce. Her work, which also includes drawings and
prints, has been exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions, has received
numerous awards, and can be found in many private collections.
Monica’s earliest illustrations
were pen and ink drawings and cover art for Tom Gilroy’s In Bikole: Eight
Modern Stories About Life in a West African Village. This work led to the illustration of several
other collections of African folk tales, including The Crest and the Hide
(Harold Courlander), as well as drawings for Cricket Magazine and cover art for
Victor Gollanz Ltd. of London and the Massachusetts Review.
In 1998 she was given the
opportunity to provide the illustrations for Jane Yolen’s Tea with an Old
Dragon, a story for young readers about Sophia Smith, the founder of Smith
College. Illustrations for several other
picture books with historical themes followed.
These included Paul Revere’s Ride (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
and Noah Webster: Weaver of Words (Pegi Deitz Shea).
Monica created paintings of
mid-eighteenth century life for an IPAD tour of the Noah Webster House
Museum. In addition, she produced
paintings for the Pocumtuc Valley Museum Association website “Impressions of a
Lost World” (dinotracksdiscovery.org).
This website explores the lives and times of those involved in the
discovery of dinosaur tracks in the Connecticut River Valley in the mid
nineteenth century. In these extensively
researched projects, Monica has been able to combine her love of painting and
of the written word, of local history and of early American decorative arts and
architecture.