AMAZING rendition! Painting or photograph?

Eminent painter Alyssa Monks, 35, is known across the world for her mermirisingly realistic oil paintings. Born 1977 in Ridgewood, New Jersey, Alyssa Monks began oil painting as a child. She studied at The New School in New York and Montclair State University and earned her BA from Boston College in 1999.

She completed an artist in residency at Fullerton College in 2006, and has lectured at many prestigious universities and institution across United States. She 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.

"Using filters such as glass, vinyl, water, and steam, I distort the body in shallow painted spaces. These filters allow for large areas of abstract design -- islands of color with activated surfaces - while bits of the human form peak through. In a contemporary take on the traditional bathing women, my subjects are pushing against the glass "window", distorting their own body, aware of and commanding the proverbial male gaze," Monks says.

"When I began painting the human body, I was obsessed with it and needed to create as much realism as possible. I chased realism until it began to unravel and deconstruct itself," she adds.

Monks's paintings have been the part of numerous solo and group exhibitions including "Intimacy" at the Kunst Museum in Ahlen, Germany and "Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820?" at the National Academy Museum of Fine Arts, New York.

Alyssa currently lives and paints in Brooklyn, New York.

Rediff.com presents some of Alyssa Monk's masterpieces!

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