Monika Leone is a ceramic artist from the ACT who owns and runs the Mawson Gallery in South Canberra. She trained as a ceramic artist at Canberra’s Institute of the Arts from 1992-1994. Influenced by ceramics she had seen while living in Italy, Egypt and Indonesia, she found herself drawn to majolica during a workshop with Pippin Drysdale. She makes thrown or handbuilt forms, some with curly Baroque handles and feet, handpainted with commercial underglazes using the majolica technique, and finished with lustres. She also makes large ceramic sculptures of birds. Her signature is a painted ‘Monika Leone ACT’.