Toni Gallo grew up in Minnesota drawing dinosaurs and pond life, graduated from Perpich Center for Arts Education and headed to California where she received her B.A. in studio art and was awarded a scholarship to attend the California State University intensive painting program in Italy following graduation. Toni has exhibited her art widely at Rosalux Gallery and Soo VIsual Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN; Silverwood Park, St. Anthony, MN; and Hopkins Art Center, Hopkins, MN to name a few. Toni was awarded a 2019 Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Over the past 6 years, she integrated yoga and meditation practices with her studio work.

“On how it came to be...The process of this painting is the story of the painting, what gives it meaning. The birth of presence. There is hesitation in beginning things, because we crave for them to be easy, to roll without obstacles or hard feelings, but all the happenings and trials give way to the truth. In painting, an undefined amount of adding and subtraction, creating and destroying unfolds until what is left is the right amount of everything. The tendency to express errors and wrong turns as unfortunate, to wish them out of existence, for it seems separate from the good truth of it all; the wholeness, invalidates the fullness of experience. It is in fact the whole spectrum; the truth of it all, every bit as important. It's the heart of the matter, because of not in spite of. Mistakes are purposeful on a path to understanding, forcing a giving up into yourself on the way through. Sometimes, taking it all away is finally seeing with knowing. The addiction in amassing, adding and adorning is the meddling of an ego enchanted by duality. As you play the role you land in, certain places become checkpoints and you 'll leave some things behind, the very things you regard highest in order to move. If you can't shed anything, what is carried becomes heavy and burdensome. Leave behind the amassed attachments ordaining your identity with arbitrary authority and you will see, faintly though it may be, the most substantial thing; the essence.”

Explore more of Toni’s art at: www.tonigalloart.com