[Alyssa Monks] Realistic Oil Painting -nsfw-

Born 1977 in Ridgewood, New Jersey, Alyssa Monks began oil painting as a child. She went on to earn her M.F.A from the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art in 2001.

"Using filters such as glass, vinyl, water, and steam, I distort the body in shallow painted spaces. These filters allow for large areas of abstract design - islands of color with activated surfaces - while bits of the human form peak through. In a contemporary take on the traditional bathing women, my subjects are pushing against the glass “window”, distorting their own body, aware of and commanding the proverbial male gaze. Thick paint strokes in delicate color relationships are pushed and pulled to imitate glass, steam, water and flesh from a distance. However, up close, the delicious physical properties of oil paint are apparent. Thus sustaining the moment when abstract paint strokes become something else."

"When I began painting the human body, I was obsessed with it and needed to create as much realism as possible. I chased realism until it began to unravel and deconstruct itself,” Alyssa states, “I am exploring the possibility and potential where representational painting and abstraction meet - if both can coexist in the same moment."

Alyssa currently lives and paints in Brooklyn, New York.

[Alyssa Monks]