The Studio by John Monks

About

John Monks is known as one of the most committed and inspired figurative painters of his generation. Painting with an infinite vigour, Monks is fascinated by the transformation of paint into light and form on the canvas. His archetypal subject matter revolves around architectural spaces. He fragments the traditional tropes of form and reconstructs them through rays of light that fracture in his interiors.

John Monks has worked in the same studio in Clapham Old Town for over thirty years. Originally a hayloft and stable it became, post war, an artisan metalworkers workplace. When Monks first encountered the space it was crammed with large broken metal springs, which were causing the floor to sag under their weight. The imagery and sentiment of the distressed buckling wood is one which has prevailed in both Monks' mind and painting. This building has, and remains, a highly potent environment where he has created the majority of the works. 

The process of creating a work of art is often a solitary occupation. The studio becomes symptomatic of a space that assists and nurtures the atmosphere required to allow creativity to thrive. It is the stage the artist sets for each individual narrative that he creates. In doing so, it offers a place of refuge in which to absorb the uncertainties and concerns of the world beyond and to attempt to channel this disquiet into a positive outcome. Nowadays, Monks divides his time between two studios based in London and France. He has restored a house in France which echoes the sentiment of his London studio, as it was abandoned for fifty years. Like an artwork itself the renovation is a constant work in progress for Monks. 

The range of Monks' painterly process – pouring the paint, glazing the surface in layers and scraping with a palette knife – allows him to weave and layer surfaces, and in doing so, he imbues his subjects with a narrative, implying atmosphere, life and change. 

This exhibition will consist of new oil paintings completed this year. They are products of 'The Studio’.