The first time my eyes fell upon an Alyssa Monks painting, I thought I was looking at a photograph. Monks’ skill with the brush is clearly evident in this series of beautifully rendered flesh, steam, water and glass.
“Monks’ work explores narrative figuration. Currently she is playing with the tension between abstraction and realism in the same work, using different filters to visually distort and disintegrate the body. The islands of steam and water droplets on the glass distort the illusion of the face or figure as the flesh reshapes itself by pushing against the glass. In this shallow painted space, the subject is pushing against our real space with pulsating vibrations of color that can make a painted body seem to have blood pumping through it… Striving for anatomical and realistic accuracy, it is her intention to convey an arresting vision that compels the viewer to feel their own humanness. It is Monks’s intent to relate visually the contemporary female experience with sensitivity, empathy, and integrity.”
Alyssa Monks earned her MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art. Monks has thrice been awarded a Grant for Painting from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. In 2010 she will participate in museum shows at the Kunst Museum in Ahlen, Germany and at the Noyes Museum. Alyssa currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
Anthony Kurtz attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where he studied New Media and Graphic Design. He has been published in Photo District News, The Wall Street Journal, Design Taxi, Common Ground Magazine, Travel + Leisure, Entertainment Weekly, and Conde Nast Traveler, among others. His work has been displayed in numerous galleries in the U.S and Europe, including Galerie Acte 2 in Paris and Artworks in San Francisco. He currently resides in San Francisco, California.
I recently read The Road by Cormac McCarthy and while immersed in the story of post apocalyptic America, I ran across the photography of Anthony Kurtz. When I looked through this series, I couldn’t believe the similarity to the images that McCarthy was conjuring in my head. Serendipitous that while reading the book I would stumble upon such a perfect compliment to it. If you’re not not familiar with The Road, no worry, Kurtz’s work speaks loudly on it’s own and is well worth exploring. Kurtz captures an America that doesn’t exist .. yet .. and he does it with style.
“One day, oxygen will be a commodity.
In this futuristic portrayal of a world gone wrong, it is unclear what happened. In the first photograph one observes a flow of converging traffic under a stormy sky. In another picture, Manhattan seems deserted. In yet another one, a man holding a baby stands at a gas station, both wearing oxygen masks. What happened? Environmental disasters? War? A world pandemic?”
The World of Tomorrow will be on display in conjunction with some of Kurtz’s other work at Dickerman Prints Gallery in San Francisco. The show titled It All Came So Close to Never Happening, will run from March 10th to April 30th.
Anthony Kurtz attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where he studied New Media and Graphic Design. He has been published in Photo District News, The Wall Street Journal, Design Taxi, Common Ground Magazine, Travel + Leisure, Entertainment Weekly, and Conde Nast Traveler, among others. His work has been displayed in numerous galleries in the U.S and Europe, including Galerie Acte 2 in Paris and Artworks in San Francisco. He currently resides in San Francisco, California.
“Kinsey’s work captures the universal essence of the human condition mainly through an energetic portrayal of urban figures. Working spontaneously, and utilizing a range of mediums, he constructs multi-layered, textured environments easily likened to the complexities of contemporary life. His images depict beings who are both triumphant in their defiant stance to their surroundings, and tragic, as they transmit a visual display of raw emotion and jangled nerves.”
Dave Kinsey’s work has been shown in galleries and museums worldwide, among these a recent exhibition at the URBIS Museum in Manchester and Art Brussels in Belgium. He has also been featured in such publications as The New York Times, Black Book and BLK/MRKT One and Two, and invited to speak at numerous institutions such as The Art Center, UCLA, Montserrat College of Art and most recently, The Semi-Permanent conference in Sydney, Australia.
Created primarily with India ink and often on found paper, Jon MacNair’s work is brimming with symbolism. His fantastical scenes, strange creatures, and outlandish characters invite immersion and stimulate the imagination. In taking a look at his work, you might find yourself kicking around inside MacNair’s head; When asked to descibe his work in a word, his response was ‘personal.’ While the work is personal to Jon, I see a mutual human element present that most of us can relate to and even become privy to. You can view more art from this prolific creator at jonmacnair.com. To find out more about his process and shows, check out his flickr stream.
In his own words:
Undoubtedly my work is narrative in tone. I like to create scenarios that play out on the paper; vignettes in which the viewer can ponder the origins of and hopefully imbue with their own personal meanings and interpretations. There is a sense of darkness and mysticism that permeates my landscapes and characters. Often I place these characters in a nighttime setting. At night, nothing is what it seems; shapes shift and shadows loom, tricking the eye and making us question what is reality and what is imagined. Revolving heavily around themes of birth, death, fear, love, joy, and the complex relationship of man versus beast, the images I create often reflect the most basic human emotions.
• More from Jon MacNair on Fogged Clarity: Scenes in Ink
Jon MacNair earned a BFA in illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. His illustrations have been featured in editorial publications such as Hyphen Magazine, Pittsburgh City Paper, Baltimore City Paper, Urbanite, Baltimore Magazine, Rockpile and The Riverfront Times. His fine art has been exhibited in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, Portland and San Francisco. He currently lives and works in Michigan.
Jeremy Asher Lynch is a film school graduate and self-taught artist with showings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Barcelona, and London. He resides in Huntington Beach, California, working as a video editor/shooter by day and an artist by night.
“As I begin a painting a subject physically, it emotionally and spiritually reveals itself to me. Each brushstroke speaks to the subsequent stroke, carrying out a dialogue, linking my subject and I as if we were meeting for the first time. I find this uncertainty exciting and embrace the indecisive nature of my work.
Artwork is love made visible…”
Kris Lewis studied Illustration at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He eventually found himself living and working in Los Angeles, where he still resides and has yet to fully explore. His paintings have been featured in galleries in cities around the world, including L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Miami, London, and Hong Kong. His work has also been seen in the publications Juxtapoz and Modern Painters, and featured in the books Copro/Nason: A Catalogue Raisonne and Two Faced: The Changing Face of Portraiture.
“Self-taught and focusing in pencil, ink, and digital paint, Rory has carved out his niche as a unique voice in the illustrative community. Working with digital media allows his paintings a greater amount of versatility, and faster production time, which makes all the difference when meeting deadlines. His influences are spread out across the respective wolds of literature, fashion, art, film, & music. His work isn’t easy to define, as he tends to shift from one style to the next and back again, but the individual pieces seem unified by a shared sense of fantasy in a modern reality.”
Rory Kurtz is an artist / illustrator living and working in Chicago. He is represented by LEVY CREATIVE MANAGEMENT in NYC.
Mona Marshall is an artist currently living in Texas. She works in encaustic on a prepared surface and photography. She has an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She also studied at Tyler School of Art in Rome and the University of Michigan. She has exhibited work in San Francisco, Santa Monica, Viridian Gallery in New York, Blue Star in San Antonio, Harris Gallery in Houston, Women and Their Work Gallery in Austin, and the Austin Museum of Art. In 2003, she won first prize in Celebrating Texas Art in Houston. Marshall has won four residencies at the MacDowell Colony and was recently a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. She is a Professor of Visual Art at College of the Mainland near Houston, and just became a Master Naturalist in Austin, Texas.
