Monks’s work explores narrative figuration. Currently she is playing with the tension between abstraction and realism in the same work, using different filters to visually distort and disintegrate the body. In this shallow painted space, the subject is pushing against our real space with pulsating vibrations of color that can make a painted body seem to have blood pumping through it. Strokes of thick, succulent paint in delicate color relationships are pushed and pulled into place to imitate glass, steam, water and flesh and create a narrative in the painted surface. The result of this pushing and pulling of realism is a confrontation of the tension between mortality and vitality. Striving for anatomical and realistic accuracy, it is her intention to convey an arresting vision that compels the viewer to feel their own humanness. It is Monks’s intent to relate visually the contemporary female experience with sensitivity, empathy, and integrity.
Alyssa Monks earned her MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art. She additionally studied at Montclair State College, the New School, and Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence. She completed an artist in residency at Fullerton College. She is Continuing Education Faculty at the New York Academy of Art, where she teaches Flesh Painting and teaches Figure Painting at Montclair State University. Alyssa has been awarded a Grant for Painting from the Elizabeth Greensheilds Foundation three times. Alyssa currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
education
Graduate School of Figurative Art, New York Academy of Art: MFA cum laude 2001
Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA: BA cum laude 1999
Lorenzo de’Medici, Florence: Spring 1998
Parsons/the New School: Painting II 1994
exhibitions
Gallery Artists: DFN Gallery, NY, 2010
Fresh Figures & Abstraction: Scott White Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA, 2010
Remnants, Fuse Gallery, NY, 2010
Flashpoint: Alyssa Monks & Tom Birkner: The Noyes Museum, Stockton College, NJ, 2010
San Francisco Fine Art Fair: Scott White Contemporary Art, CA, 2010
New Paintings: David Klein Gallery, MI, 2010 (Solo Exhibition)
