Visual ArtsAlyssa Monks DFN Gallery Exclusive Interview
Exclusive: Alyssa Monks Talks about her Bathing Beauties
10:35 am Wednesday Apr 15, 2009
by Laura Fenton
Alyssa Monks’ solo exhibition opened last Thursday night at New York’s DFN Gallery to grinning crowds, and it’s a show worth smiling over — her new paintings are stunning. A continuation of the artist’s bather series (contemporary versions of the image of a bathing female nude), Monk’s subjects confront the viewer head-on; she has taken the bather and placed her behind a filter of water, walls of glass and mosaic-like shower doors, distorting the image and collecting drops of water and steam. The resulting works — abstracted, in spite of their photo-like qualities — gracefully explore the tension between reality and invention.
Flavorwire: Your current show is a series of female figures bathing, what made you chose this subject?
Alyssa Monks: I’ve always painted women. It started with the self-portraits and then I took a detour to paint family members. And in a way, the paintings of family are self-portraits of myself without me in them. In this series, my sister-in-law was the model for Steamed and Smirk; a very close friend of mine is Laughing Girl and Laugh. I never use models that I don’t know or have a relationship with. When I am painting someone I am having a conversation with them. If I don’t know them, they become more of an object, less of an active subject. For this series it was important that these women were active subjects. There is this long tradition of bathers as coy and unaware — there is a voyeurism in it [the tradition]. Degas’s bathers are these blank-slated women, it was important to me that these were real women. They are not just objects of the male gaze.
FW: You work from photographs, tell me about your process.
AM: I paint directly from the photo, but there is a lot of invention even though I have a reference. There’s no way to make it exactly like a photograph. I’m not interested in that and I’ve never been a photo-realist. Part of the challenge is to figure out what to use from the photo and what to invent.
Image: Alyssa Monks, Laughing Girl
FW: Much of your work features a water theme. Why are you so drawn to water?
AM: The whole water thing kind of found me, and I evolved into it. I have a memory of painting when I was 14 or 15 years old. I was looking through references for what I wanted to paint next. I found an image of water, but it was too hard to paint. So, it was a personal milestone to paint water. I came back to it [painting water] 5 or 6 years ago and I loved the way it played with the flesh — how it was destructive to the form and added this other level of challenge.
There are all these ways that water can act on the body. I liked how it added distortion and abstraction, how it could create new texture. It allowed me to use the paint in a more lose, fresh way. The danger with working from a photograph is to flatten things and be really tight; with the water you can’t paint that way. You have to invent water out of paint.
FW: Tell me about the choice to place a barrier between the viewer and the subject?
AM: I was using water as a filter, and it made me wonder what other filters I could come up with. First I covered myself with Vaseline and water. Then I used a vinyl shower curtain, and the shower doors were next. Some of the shower doors create this mosaic effect and some of them are flat; it seemed like the next natural evolution.
Creating a filter really spoke to me 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. The glass also a reference to the windowpane that traditionally leads into another world. It talks about the surface of the painting itself, speaking directly about the tension between illusion and abstraction.
The glass also goes back to this idea of having these women be involved with conversation. They are confident enough to confront the viewers.
Images: Alyssa Monks, Fragment;
FW: Did it take time to figure out how to paint flesh in this distorted way?
AM: Absolutely. In every painting I try to set it up a new challenge. That keeps it interesting for me. It also keeps me humble, keeps me learning. With Steamed I hadn’t done anything on that scale yet. I painted a little bit of it and I said, “I can’t do this,” but then I did. (Laughs) Every shower is a new challenge.
FW: What’s next?
AM: I have a few more in this series. I am really excited by the doors: The steam, the water droplets, the doors themselves, and sometimes the skin pressing against the door. They have the most levels of filters.
I’ll continue with the tension of tightness and realness, abstraction and distortion. We’ll see where that takes me. I’ve been thinking about using materials in the water to change the texture of the water itself. Recently I put flour into a bathtub full of water; I thought of filling a bath with wine. I’m always thinking of ways of affecting the skin — new ways to disintegrate the form.
FW: Do you think you’ll ever get bored of water?
AM: No, actually, never. I feel like the water has become the perfect translation of the medium. Painting someone dry is boring for me.
Swimmin' With Women (And Painter Alyssa Monks) at Anaheim's Sarah Bain Gallery
By GREG STACY
Published on September 10, 2008 at 11:52am
Look Back In Aqua
Swimmin’ with women (and painter Alyssa Monks) at the Sarah Bain Gallery
"Smush," oil on linen, 40 x 54 inches
Scrubbing, crying, or both?The Sarah Bain Gallery seems to be developing its own unusual little niche, showcasing art by women who paint cranky, slouchy ladies with pot bellies. (Note that this should not be interpreted as a putdown. Some of my favorite people are cranky, slouchy ladies with pot bellies.)
The gallery has a particularly strong line of photorealistic paintings of girls doing “girly” things, the kind of stuff we might expect to see in the pages of some swanky fashion magazine, but doing it in an unsettling, totally unglamorous way. Back in March, they presented Pamela Wilson’s memorable depictions of women and little girls standing around in frilly, fancy costumes, trying to look ominous and Goth and failing adorably. In April, Lee Price offered up pictures of ladies with big, colorful piles of candy and cupcakes—only the women looked oppressed by all this abundance, like the food was closing in on them. Continuing this proud tradition, the gallery now brings us the work of Alyssa Monks, who paints grimly compelling portraits of naked ladies in the shower. All of these artists offer a clinical yet loving look at the female of the species, captured without apology or Photoshop trickery in all their awkward, beautiful, wretched glory.
The eroticism of Monks’ work is obvious and undeniable, with all those droplets of water trickling down soft, pale shoulders. Monks wraps some of her women in transparent shower curtains, their hot breath fogging the plastic. In some of the pieces, Monks focuses intensely on the sensual details of their bodies, on pregnant bellies and swollen boobs, on ruddy cheeks and the wet, tangled hair hanging in their faces. It’s all a little dizzying; you can almost smell the steam.
But that eroticism has a creepy dark side. These women do not look happy. Actually, many of them look exhausted and depressed, like they’re scrubbing off the grime after a long, hard day. A few of these images are just straight-up sexy. (Wet, depicting a woman’s shoulders and chin as she bathes, is as close as this show gets to softcore porn.) But some of the women who are seemingly tangled up in shower curtains bear a distressing resemblance to bodies found at a crime scene; they make you think of poor Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks. Smush shows a lady pressing her fingers into the wet flesh of her face, and it’s hard to tell if she’s scrubbing up, weeping, or both.
And then, God help us, there’s Mom, peering at us through a pebbled shower door with her eyes full of raw bitterness, like we’ve just broken her heart. All of which would be disturbing enough—but Mom is also wet and naked. I don’t think I want to think about this anymore.
The paintings take us through various stages of a woman’s life, all of them dripping and nude. Here is a woman, young and supple and full of life (Wet). Here is a woman pregnant and seemingly none too thrilled about it (Vapor). Here is that woman’s freshly born child, covered in sticky glop as it raises its fat little arms and howls to the skies, knowing only its own need (Baptism). And finally, here is Mom, looking back at life and wondering if it was worth all the bother.
These women feel real, so much so that it can seem wrong to look at them, like . . . well, like you’re peeking in on them while they’re taking a shower. But while the intimacy of these scenes can be creepy, it can also be strangely touching. They either don’t know you’re there, or they don’t care. In either case, they’re without self-consciousness or affect. They are simply themselves, washing off the cares of one day, trying to get ready to face another.
Alyssa Monks’ “Liquid” at the Sarah Bain Gallery, 184 Center St. Promenade, Anaheim, (714) 758-0545; www.sarahbaingallery.com. Open Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Through Sept. 28.
