About the artist

 

 

I am Armelle Ngo — a French painter and muralist based in Hermosa Beach, a small beachtown near Los Angeles, California.

My work is built on flat color, geometric line, and the simplification of form. Influences from Van Gogh, Brâncuși, Surrealism and Cubism, applied to surfers, volleyball players, waves, and women standing still in bright rooms. I paint Southern California the way it feels from the inside — not as a postcard, but as a place where light does something different every hour and the body is always in motion.

I grew up near Sancerre, France, and spent my teenage years in Paris haunting museums and making quiet promises to myself. I became an English and German translator-interpreter, living and working in Switzerland, Germany, and Ireland before moving to California in 2012 with my husband and three children. I picked up a brush again in 2016 to volunteer as an art teacher at my kids' school. That was it.

In 2024, the City of Manhattan Beach selected me from over 100 applicants to paint a 640-square-foot mural on the Manhattan Heights Community Center. The year before I painted a 2,000-square-foot mural for the Hermosa Valley Middle School gymnasium, which the district superintendent called "a city landmark."

I am a member of The Art Hive, a collective of 12 women artists within the South Bay Artist Collective, who meet weekly and exhibit regularly throughout the region.

Bloom where you're planted is my life's motto. My paintings are proof.