Alyssa Monks
Do you feel you fit into any specific movement or style? I’ve been called a photorealist and a hyperrealist. I think the term “photorealist” has changed since the days of Richard Estes. Now anything that looks realistic at all seems to be called photorealism. I’m not all that concerned with fitting into a specific movement or style, to be honest. I think I’ve always been more interested in creating the work that is honest and meaningful to me - one painting at a time - and hopefully staying challenged and engaged for the duration. Whatever comes out of that, people can call what they want, but I will be moving on to the next painting. I find it distracting and limiting to think about the labels. And I think the movements can’t be defined in the present, but only in hindsight. So I am just staying in the present and working on my work.
When did you realize you wanted to make art seriously? I realized I wanted to paint and draw most of the time when I was about eight. I realized I wanted to be an “artist” when I was fourteen. I had such a clear idea early on and I was very lucky to have a mother who heard my pleas for painting classes at such young age. She took me to so many schools, classes, and museum shows. I don’t remember it ever feeling like a burden or chore. It was more like I would just go into a trance and quietly escape into this other world I was trying to create. I am the youngest of eight, so I think drawing and painting did serve a purpose for me in terms of finding my own voice, and also a little bit of control over my space. Over time it became part of my identity. I very much felt that this was my own special place that could never been destroyed or taken from me, and so I kept coming back to it. I never wavered or questioned it. But I also never demanded anything of it and I think that was very important. I felt that I would be happy just to be able to paint. My plan was to wait tables or be an assistant somewhere if I had to, so long as I could paint. It’s not that I didn’t have ambition, I did, but it was to paint big, awesome, powerful paintings.
Who are you're biggest creative influences? Vincent Desiderio taught me subtlety and curiosity. He is always challenging himself with a new technique or medium. He was the reason I went to the New York Academy. And on the first day of class, he answered all my questions about painting and gave me about a thousand new ones. It was so exciting to finally find and learn from someone whose paintings literally made me tear up with amazement. Jenny Saville taught me confidence and boldness – accuracy without self- consciousness. She is totally committed and humble. I admire her attitude so much. The workshop I had with her made me feel my own will again behind my brush, my own muscle and force. It’s just painting, and it is so f***ing awesome. Will Cotton’s evolution is a great inspiration. I always think of him when I think of how to come up with your own visual vocabulary. He paints what he knows well and what he is attracted to without self-consciousness. It started with a simple attraction and grew to an entire world of confectionary landscape. It’s delicious to get lost in it. Alex Kanevsky is another painter who really just paints what he loves and does so with total indulgent and unbridled conviction. The result is succulent and sensual. These three painters I feel have each created a visual vocabulary and atmosphere that through repetition and experimentation really supports their subjects and voice. You really feel like you can live in their paintings, and get a feel for the space they inhabit. It’s not passive art on a wall that looks pretty or matches your couch. It demands attention and engages it’s viewers, seducing them to take another look, and another…so awesome. These are three figurative painters who are not limiting themselves to just describing something beautiful; they are transcending the paint and the act of painting into some kind of imprint of the human experience. It’s raw and carnal; at times beautiful in its ugly humanness.
www.poetsandartists.com
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