Renowned Artist Monique Rollins Encourages HPU Students During Campus Visit

HIGH POINT, N.C., Oct. 22, 2024 – Monique Rollins encouraged High Point University art students to believe in themselves and to not wait to be “discovered” during her first visit to campus as HPU’s Artist in Residence on Oct. 17.

With colorful, abstract paintings on display in art galleries and museums across the globe, Rollins spoke to a class of Painting I and Painting II students about her experiences as a working artist. She told them about her struggles to be taken seriously as a young, up-and-coming artist, which led to her eventually starting her own art gallery and showcasing her own work.

“You don’t need to wait to be discovered,” Rollins told the students gathered inside an art studio on the bottom floor of Plato S. Wilson Hall. “If you have eight art people come in and they don’t stop on your painting, it’s not that your paintings aren’t great. It’s that they don’t notice your greatness, and guess what. There’s a whole world of people out there waiting to notice your greatness. You got to put yourself out there.”

After speaking to the class, Rollins walked around the art studio and watched as students worked on their own paintings of objects on display in the room. She occasionally stopped to speak with the students about their artwork.

Rollins took interest in a painting by Kinsey Gebhart, a senior who is majoring in studio art and media production and entrepreneurship from Atlanta, Georgia. Gebhart said she appreciated hearing Rollins tell her about the importance of sticking with her linework because lines are a critical part of Gebhart’s style as an artist.

“I think it’s really nice to have an outside perspective that you’ve never met before come in and explain their reasoning for what they do and then explain why it’s also important to branch out because I think sometimes you do get kind of stuck in your little bubble,” Gebhart said.

Rollins has an extensive portfolio that includes oil paintings, acrylic paintings and charcoal drawings. She has used a variety of mediums for her artwork, including pencil, acrylic, watercolor and pen and ink.

Rollins has had art exhibitions in the United States, Asia and Europe. In 2018, she had solo exhibitions at Metroquadro Gallery in Turin, Italy, the Dante Alighieri Society in Venice, Italy, and at a pair of locations in Beijing, China — the Zhu Naizheng Research Center for Art and the American Center.

A native of Wilmington, Delaware, Rollins’s artwork can be viewed in the municipal offices of Wilmington and at public sites throughout the city. Her paintings are also on display in the official residence of the Ambassador to the European Union in Kingston, Jamaica.

Rollins told HPU students that she never works on one painting at a time and instead has multiple pieces going on simultaneously and bounces back and forth between them in her studio. She also offered advice that she had learned during her career as an artist.

Rollins said it is meaningless for students to compare themselves to other artists since “nobody is going to make the marks on their canvas that you’re going to make.” She also encouraged them to keep painting as much as possible since, like a musician, they are learning the fundamentals until they eventually create a “unique song” with their art.

“You need you to say, ‘I’m standing here. I care about that canvas.’ Is that enough? Yeah, it is. Remember that,” Rollins said. “You don’t need approval from anyone. You don’t need approval from anyone telling you that your art is good enough. The fact that you want to stand in front of a canvas and say what you want to say, that’s good enough.”

Anna Olivieri, a junior who is majoring in studio art from Virginia Beach, Virginia, said she was encouraged to keep pursuing art after hearing Rollins share her message with students.

“She was really inspiring about how she started her artwork career and kept with it, how she made her own studio and all that,” Olivieri said. “I would love to do that one day, but I have never talked to anyone that has their own studio, so it was really cool to hear how she did that. It was just super helpful.”