Alyssa Monks
- Words
- Caroline Kurze
Artist Alyssa Monks always painted women. She started with the self-portraits and then took a detour to paint family members. Her bathing beauties evolve directly from photographs while she intentionally adds a lot of invention to them in her paintings.
+ Read MoreIt seems like water is the overall theme to them and Alyssa says that the water thing kind of found her, and she evolved into it. She has a memory of painting when she was 14 or 15 years old and found an image of water, but it was too hard to paint. So, it was a personal milestone to paint water. She loves the way water plays with the flesh; how it added distortion and abstraction, how it could create new texture. So she decided I was using water as a filter. Creating a filter really spoke to her as a way to draw the viewer in. Putting a barrier in between the viewer and the subject invites the viewer to work a little harder.
All images © Alyssa Monks
