Alyssa Monks earned her B.A. from Boston College and she studied painting at Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence. She went on to complete her M.F.A at the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art in 2001. She teaches and lectures at universities and institutions nationwide.

“My intention is to transfer the intimacy and vulnerability of my human experience into a painted surface. I like mine to be as intimate as possible, each brush stroke like a fossil, recording every gesture and decision.”

Monks’s paintings have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions including “Intimacy” at the Kunst Museum in Ahlen, Germany and “Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820-2009″ at the National Academy Museum of Fine Arts, New York. Her work is represented in public and private collections, including the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, The Center for Contemporary Art, and the collections of Howard Tullman, Danielle Steele and Eric Fischl.

Alyssa has been awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for Painting three times, and has been invited to give a TED talk at Indiana University in November 2015. Alyssa Monks is a member of the New York Academy of Art’s Board of Trustees. She currently lives and paints in Brooklyn, New York.

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