Breaking Point

Alyssa Monks’ recent exhibition at Forum Gallery highlights the development of her artwork.

- John O’Hern

Alyssa Monks says, “I strive to create a moment in a painting where the viewer can see or feel themselves, identify with the subject, even be the subject, connect with it as though it is about them, personally.”

Her paintings around 2005 were highly rendered. She says, “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. I am exploring the possibility and potential where representational painting and abstraction meet—if both can coexist in the same moment.”

Her most recognized paintings are figures in the small confines of a shower seen through water and steam coated glass, immersed in a moment of privacy and intimacy with cleansing and revivifying water. The distortions of water and glass push the images toward abstraction.

The death of her mother from cancer five years ago jolted her sense of security but opened her to a feeling for the beauty in all of life from the sensuous shower to the awfulness of dying.