Mónica Loya (Chihuahua, Mexico, 1990) is a Mexican visual artist whose work falls within the realm of pop surrealism, exploring the human figure, primarily female, and emotions such as anxiety, melancholy and desire through painting and illustration. Two original oil paintings by her are currently available in the gallery's Mónica Loya collection at published prices: La Espera (“the wait”) at $2,750 USD and Nothing Lasts and Everything Hurts at $825 USD.
Who Is Mónica Loya, and What Does She Paint?
Mónica Loya (Chihuahua, Mexico, 1990) is a Mexican visual artist. The gallery places her work within the realm of pop surrealism and describes a practice built on painting and illustration. Her subject is the human figure, primarily female, and the emotions that gather around it: anxiety, melancholy and desire.
Anxiety, melancholy and desire are states rather than events, and states rarely announce themselves from the outside, which is a good reason to spend time with the paintings themselves.
The gallery's own description says she paints surreal interiors of feeling, in oil on fabric, folding dogs, stairs, flowers and figures into dreamlike, pop-tinged scenes that carry real melancholy beneath their decorative surfaces. The two originals below share that medium and a year: both are oil on fabric, dated 2025.
What Does Pop Surrealism Look Like in Her Work?
Rather than define the label in the abstract, it is more useful to follow how the gallery describes it in her paintings. Her work, it says, combines everyday scenes with dreamlike atmospheres, using soft palettes and compositions that reveal a tension between the intimate and the unsettling.
Two pairings run through that sentence and the gallery's other descriptions: the everyday beside the dreamlike, and the decorative beside the sorrowful. Neither resolves. Familiar domestic elements drift slightly out of logic, in the gallery's words for the works below, so whatever is unsettling is set against something recognizable.
The store tags on both listings offer a vocabulary for the same mood, among them dog, flowers, stairs, dream, pop art, portraiture, figurative, surrealism, woman, fashion and decoration. Tags are filing labels, not a description of any single canvas, so read them as themes the gallery associates with the work, not an inventory of what each painting shows.
Note that the artist page speaks of soft palettes, while the description of La Espera speaks of bright, flattened color. Both are the gallery's words; the paintings themselves are the place to see how the two fit. For wider context, the Journal's piece on the artists redefining contemporary surrealism is a good next read.
What Her Artist Statement Says About Anxiety and Memory
Her artist statement, published on the gallery's page, gives her own account of what her paintings are. In her words: "I believe that my paintings, beyond representing a specific moment or image, are always linked to a memory, an emotion, or something from the subconscious. I don't just paint what I see, but what I feel. I feel it's quite generational, but I think anxiety is a very important creative tool if you know how to channel it."
Three things stand out. She says her paintings go beyond representing a specific moment or image and are always linked to a memory, an emotion or something from the subconscious. She paints, in her words, not just what she sees but what she feels, which hands the viewer a question to bring to the canvas: not only what is here, but what it feels like to look at it. And she treats anxiety as a working tool, something to be channeled, a practical attitude more than a confession.
Another passage from the same statement is about method: "I appear in all my paintings in one way or another. Perhaps not literally, but if I want to paint hands or legs, it's easier for me to use myself as a reference. Sometimes I also use my friends a lot. I'm always taking pictures, seeing if anything will work later. The image, the idea, always comes first. Then, as I work on it, I begin to notice the details that come from an emotion or something more introspective."
By her account the image comes first and the details surface as she works. She adds "Perhaps not literally", so no single figure needs to be read as a straightforward self-portrait, and the details are worth approaching with curiosity rather than as a code to be cracked.
How Do the Two Available Originals Compare?
Both are original oil paintings on fabric, dated 2025, and each is a unique work mounted on a professional wooden frame, with a certificate of authenticity included. There is one of each available. They differ in size, price and the mood the gallery emphasizes.
In the listing photograph, a pair of glossy red-stockinged legs rests in a green armchair, a vase of drooping red tulips beside them and a white poodle at the chair's foot, all set against a pink wall with faint stairs and a black-and-white checkered floor.
La Espera (“the wait”) measures 100 × 80 cm (39.4 × 31.5 in) and is priced at $2,750 USD. The gallery describes a scene of anticipation held in suspension, where waiting becomes its own quiet subject and time seems to slow. It sets bright, flattened color against a mood of stillness, with the pop palette doing little to hide the ache underneath, and it notes that familiar domestic elements drift slightly out of logic.
In the listing photograph, a hand with long, chrome-tipped nails holds a single white rose against a saturated red ground, and one drop of blood falls from a fingertip.
Nothing Lasts and Everything Hurts measures 40 × 30 cm (15.7 × 11.8 in) and is priced at $825 USD. The gallery says it wears its ache openly in the title, then lets the image hold it more quietly, the decorative and the sorrowful pressed into the same small frame. At this intimate scale, the gallery adds, the mood is concentrated and the compact size pulls the viewer in close, while flattened color and slightly displaced domestic elements give the everyday a tender, unsettled edge.
Set side by side, scale is the plainest difference: the larger dimension of the first, 100 cm, is two and a half times that of the second, 40 cm, and the price difference is $1,925 ($2,750 against $825). The mood differs in emphasis, too: stillness and slowed time for the larger work, closeness and concentration for the smaller. The table below gathers the details.
| La Espera | Nothing Lasts and Everything Hurts | |
|---|---|---|
| Medium | Oil on fabric | Oil on fabric |
| Year | 2025 | 2025 |
| Size | 100 × 80 cm (39.4 × 31.5 in) | 40 × 30 cm (15.7 × 11.8 in) |
| Edition | Unique work | Unique work |
| Framing | Mounted on a professional wooden frame | Mounted on a professional wooden frame |
| Certificate of authenticity | Included | Included |
| Price | $2,750 USD | $825 USD |
| Available | 1 | 1 |
Choosing Between a Small Work and a Large One
Start with the wall rather than the painting. Measure the space where you imagine hanging it, then mark out the listed size with painter's tape: 100 × 80 cm for the larger work, 40 × 30 cm for the smaller. Leave the outline up for a few days and see how it sits with the furniture and the light. If the depth or outer size of the wooden frame matters, ask the gallery before deciding.
Then think about distance. A larger work can be read from across a room and rewards standing back; a small one asks you to step up to it, which is close to what the gallery says of the smaller work, that its compact size pulls the viewer in close. Picture where you will usually stand: a hallway, a desk and a long living-room wall each ask for a different scale.
Budget belongs in the conversation from the start. The prices are published, $2,750 and $825, so you can know the number before you look further, and both works come mounted on wooden frames with a certificate of authenticity. Decide what you are comfortable spending first and let the choice follow.
If both feel right, that is an honest difficulty, not a mistake: in the gallery's descriptions they share a medium, a year and an emotional register, at very different scales. How to trust your own eye as a collector is a useful companion when the decision is a matter of taste rather than measurement, and the gallery's original paintings collection offers more to look at.
How to Look at a Dreamlike Domestic Scene
Begin from a distance, whether across the room or at arm's length from a screen, and note the first word that comes to mind: calm, stillness, unease, tenderness, something else. A first impression is useful information, and it is easy to lose once you start reading captions.
Then move closer and separate the familiar from the strange. The gallery describes familiar domestic elements that drift slightly out of logic, so find the things you recognize, then look for whatever is a little off in how they are placed, scaled or lit. If a dog, a staircase or a flower turns up, as the gallery's description suggests one might, look at how it is handled before asking what it means.
Notice the color next. The gallery speaks of flattened color and of a pop palette; ask where the color is loud, where it goes quiet, and whether the brightness reads as cheerful or as a kind of cover. The gallery's own reading of La Espera is that the palette does little to hide the ache underneath, so test that against your own eye.
Finally, read the title and let it argue with the image. Nothing Lasts and Everything Hurts states its feeling outright, and the gallery says the image then holds that feeling more quietly; ask whether the picture agrees with the title, softens it or answers back. What an artwork's title tells you goes further, and how to visit a gallery show covers seeing a painting in person, worth doing whenever you can, since scale and surface are hard to judge from a photograph.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Mónica Loya?
Mónica Loya (Chihuahua, Mexico, 1990) is a Mexican visual artist whose work falls within the realm of pop surrealism. Through painting and illustration she explores the human figure, primarily female, and emotions such as anxiety, melancholy and desire.
What does Mónica Loya paint?
The gallery describes surreal interiors of feeling, painted in oil on fabric. Her work combines everyday scenes with dreamlike atmospheres, using soft palettes and compositions that reveal a tension between the intimate and the unsettling.
Which Mónica Loya paintings are available at Art of NOMA?
Two original oil paintings on fabric, both from 2025 and both mounted on a professional wooden frame with a certificate of authenticity: La Espera (“the wait”), 100 × 80 cm, at $2,750 USD, and Nothing Lasts and Everything Hurts, 40 × 30 cm, at $825 USD. One of each is available, and the gallery publishes its prices openly.
What does Mónica Loya say about her own work?
In her artist statement she says her paintings are always linked to a memory, an emotion or something from the subconscious, and that she paints not just what she sees but what she feels. She adds that she appears in all her paintings in one way or another, though perhaps not literally.