Alyssa Monks

 Es fácil que el hiperrealismo nos cautive, pues uno se asombra por la similitud que puede existir entre una fotografía o una imagen hecha con pintura, sin embargo hay obras que logran cautivarnos por algo más que una buena ejecución del pincel. Esto es lo que pasa cuando conoces la pintura de Alyssa Monks, una artista que explora la figuración narrativa jugando con la tensión entre la abstracción y el realismo de la misma obra.

Para ello utiliza diferentes filtros para distorsionar la imagen del cuerpo: agua, cortinas de plástico, vapor; trazos de pintura gruesa e interpretaciones delicadas crean este juego que pretende hacer una contraposición entre la mortalidad y la vitalidad del cuerpo humano.
Así lo que logra resaltar de las pinturas de Alyssa, no es tanto el realismo con el que logra captar una imagen, sino la intensidad que obtiene de cada una de sus pinturas.

Esta artista, que actualmente vive en Nueva York, lleva trabajando desde 2006 y los detalles tanto de los lienzos como los de cada uno de sus personajes se vuelven cada vez más impresionantes, mientras más tiempo los observas.  En sus pinturas hay dolor, tensión, alegría desbordada, pareciera que podemos sentir el vapor saliendo por entre los pliegues del plástico, tocar el cabello húmedo y secarlo, o sumergirse en una de las gotas que bañan con suavidad el rostro. ¡Impresionante

Born 1977 in Ridgewood, New Jersey, Alyssa Monks began oil painting as a child. She studied at The New School in New York and Montclair State University and earned her B.A. from Boston College in 1999. During this time she studied painting at Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence. She went on to earn her M.F.A from the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art in 2001. She completed an artist in residency at Fullerton College in 2006 and has lectured at universities and institution nation wide. She has taught Flesh Painting at the New York Academy of Art, as well as Montclair State University and the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts.

Monks’ paintings explore the tension between abstraction and realism, using different filters to visually distort and disintegrate the body. In this shallow painted space, the subject is pushing against our real space. Strokes of thick paint in delicate color relationships are pushed and pulled to imitate glass, steam, water and flesh. “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, “Realism and Abstraction are in a symbiotic relationship – they need each other to exist and eventually become the same.”

Monks' paintings have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions including "Intimacy" at the Kunst Museum in Ahlen, Germany and "Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820–2009" at the National Academy Museum of Fine Arts, New York. Her work is represented in public and private collections, including the Savannah College of Arts, the Somerset Art Association and the collections of Howard Tullman, Danielle Steele and Eric Fischl.

Alyssa has been awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for Painting three times and is a member of the New York Academy of Art's Board of Trustees. She is currently represented by David Klein Gallery in Birmingham, Michigan. Alyssa currently lives and paints in Brooklyn, New York.