To conclude the first day of Alyssa Monks’ sold out Master Class, the artist presented a lecture on her work, process, and the intimacies of her creative influences. Monks, a New Jersey native, was introduced by local Columbusite, and internationally renowned realist painter, Bo Bartlett, and the executive director of the Bo Bartlett Center, David Houston.
Bartlett introduced Monks first and did so by comically discussing Google Trends, after hearing about the software for the first time recently. Bartlett searched himself, and other close artist friends, and said “we were all relatively low” across the board, but when he put in Alyssa Monks name the peak reached really high. He then stated, "we are among the presence of highly Googled people." Bartlett continued with a story of how he met and hung out with Monks for the first time, with his wife Betsy, after a Sotheby’s "Take Home a Nude" event.
Bartlett then introduced Houston to talk. Houston touched on Monks's Master Class, for those in the audience not taking the class, titled "Transcending the Photo Reference." He then spoke about her most recent shows and how well regarded she is in the art community. Houston congratulated Monks on being the first guest artist to teach a Master Class at the Center, then welcomed Monks to take the stage.
Monks said she was excited to be in Columbus, and been preparing for this class for two years. In her lecture, Monks focused on insight into her progression. The artist started her presentation with displaying a few of her first figure paintings, and described how they were critiqued by her professors. She said they wanted her to be subtle, but the artist said she wanted to be seen. So, Monks painted with three criteria: needed the work to be illusionistic, and as big, and bright, as possible. She remarked, "the opposite of subtle." Monks was convinced her paintings were good when she told the audience a story of how a cop pulled their gun out on one of them, thinking the figure in the painting was a real person. The artist said early on in her career, due to not being able to render the human body the way she wanted, anatomy became very important in her work. “I want my paintings to be alive,” Monks stated.
She continued her talk with describing her training at the New York Academy, and being taught by Vincent Desiderio. Monks enjoyed painting figures in interiors at the time, and told the audience she was making her own scenes. She did this by having people in her life, such as her boyfriend and close friends, pose for her, in costume. She compared her process to the work of Eric Fischl. The artist described her subject matter by stating "the idea takes you and you just have to run with it." Monks said that half way through her last semester, there was a major breakthrough with her work, and that she started to 'see.' It was at this time Monks started painting water. She told herself that it was going to be hard, but enjoyed the challenge.
In a painting of a woman in a tub, one of her first of the series, the artist was inspired by a scene from Requiem for a Dream. “It resonated with me,” she stated. “Painting is a sanctuary,” said Monks, and “taking a bath is like that too.” She liked how the water abstracted the image, and said it got her excited. The next phase in her painting was placing a piece of glass in between the subject and the viewer. Monks wanted to know what could be left out of the painting and wanted the viewer to impose their own interpretation to things. She stated, “I wanted people to feel themselves in the painting.” The artist described this process as “learning a different language of how to see."
After the loss of a family member, Monks’ work shifted immensely. She stated “everything working up to this point began to unravel.” The artist removed the figure, and shifted from painting primarily interiors to creating landscapes. Monks then thought about painting both landscape and figures, and her new body of work was created. On this difficult process of combing the two, she stated "it's super fun, but super hard.”
The following are a few of Monks' paintings she presented during her lecture on November 4th, 2016, in Columbus State University's Corn Center for the Visual Arts, Crit Space 1.
Morning After, 30" x 50", oil on linen, 2004
Welcome To, 80" x 55", oil on linen, 2005
Clarity, 54" x 40", oil on linen, 2005
The Race, 72" x 96", oil on linen, 2007
Fish, 64" x 86", oil on linen, 2007
Noise, 64" x 86", oil on linen, 2007
Tug of War, 64" x 86", oil on linen, 2007
Baptism, 42" x 56", oil on linen, 2008
Gasp, 48" x 72", oil on linen, 2010
Reserve, 32" x 48", oil on linen, 2011
Africa, 54" x 82", oil on linen, 2015
Horizon, 66" x 56", oil on linen, 2015
Synthesis, 56" x 84", oil on linen, 2015
Awakened, 66" x 56", oil on linen, 2016
Alyssa Monks' artwork, along with her TED talk, and other videos, can be viewed on her webpage. The artist is represented by Forum Gallery in NYC, and serves as a member of the New York Academy of Art's Board of Trustees.
