Between Realism and Abstraction - The photorealisitc paintings of Alyssa Monks

Alyssa Monks is an artist from Ridgewood, New Jersey, and earned her M.F.A from the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art in 2001. The artist’s paintings explore the tension between abstraction and realism, using different filters to visually distort and disintegrate the body.

“I want to explore how far I can push both the real and the abstract at the same time, into one another, building that tension until they are just one and the same - where the "real" is still recognizable, but becoming totally abstract simultaneously. They have a symbiotic relationship after all and one could not exist without the other. Then why not put them in the same canvas?  I am trying to use more paint and imagination in the abstraction that these filters create. There is a lot of invention in this body of work,” the artist tells us.  

Monks' paintings have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions. 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. The artist has also has lectured at universities nation wide and 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.  A collection of the artist’s stunning artworks can be seen below.