Jean Gray Mohs

On this episode we interview abstract artist Jean Gray Mohs. We talk about the importance of movement and play in the creative process, communicating your personal story through your art, pursuing opportunities based on the work you make, and building objects as totems of resilience and hope.

Jean Gray Mohs | Raleigh, NC

Abstract Artist

Artist Bio:

Raleigh-based artist Jean Gray Mohs creates abstract objects that honor and bring attention to the processes and mechanisms of our inner landscape through the use of contrasting sturdy and fragile materials. Her works celebrate the harsh edges of life and closely observe our bodies’ exposure to time and disease. Selected exhibits include the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, the North Carolina Museum of Art, Greenhill Gallery, Meredith College, Duke University Hospital, and an upcoming show at Greensboro Project Space in the fall of 2023.

Artist Statement:

Through various media and with a current focus on painting and sculpture, Jean Gray Mohs’s work merges her lived experience as a person with chronic illness and past disability into art. Using maple plywood and waxed thread, Mohs hints at the presence of two bodies born separately but now bound in a new, perfect balance in a reflection of her experience with a double lung transplant.

By using sturdy wood and the seemingly fragile waxed thread as art-making materials, she explores the emotional, physical, and psychological space in those moments of vulnerability, anxiety, fragility, and resiliency. Her work zooms in on ideas of strength, fragility, and balance, a world those with chronic illness know all too well.