Mo Nique (in full ‘Monique Koning’) is a South African artist with Dutch parents. Mo Nique grew up in Port Elizabeth, South-Africa. From 1995 to 2012 she lived in the Netherlands where her 3 children were also born. and ended up in Wynberg (Cape Town) after having lived in the Netherlands for 17 years. As a single mother, she then moved back to Cape Town. Her ambition is to inspire and motivate people with her vivid and colourful paintings.

Mo Nique is ambitious. Her goal is to build a reputation as a successful South African artist and leave something behind that matters. This eccentric, playful and spontaneous woman discovered her talent when she was seventeen. She gradually expanded her creative gift.

“Art chose me, I did not choose art.”

Art is her absolute passion. Even in the darkest periods of her life, art proved to be her safe haven. Life events, which were sometime painful, made Mo Nique the artist she is today.

For Mo Nique art is her ultimate outlet. Her playful and lively personality is reflected in her painting. That’s why Mo Nique loves to work with lots of colours and vibrant shades. Love, beauty, sensuality, passion and intrigue are things she reflects in her work with excellence.

Her lively personality is expressed on canvas

With her feminine portrait paintings she honours and celebrates the feminine forms, grace, movement, vulnerability and strength. “I portray the female desires and ambitions, at the same time idealistic and caring,” says Mo Nique.

Mo Nique loves to experiment with her brush and palette knife. She is not afraid to try out a variety of styles and techniques. This South African artist uses mainly oil paint. The softness, transparency of the paint and the way the different colours mix is what fascinates her. Her painting is characterised by bold and self-assured brushstrokes. With her palette knife she brings texture into her flower paintings. Her creative process is accompanied by funky music and swinging dance movements. These dynamics flow onto canvas.

Mo Nique feels blessed with her talent and hopes to motivate and cheer people up with her colourful portrait and flower paintings. She is always open to all kinds of creative requests.

In 2018 we discovered a small portrait of Mo Nique in a gallery in Cape Town. The gallery owner told us that this was the first work of Mo Nique that he had ever received, her previous works were flower paintings. We wanted to buy the work for our private collection but it had already been sold the day before after hanging in the gallery for barely 1 day. A year later, ahead of the launch of Atelier Louis, we contacted Mo Nique. We clicked immediately and started our collaboration.