Interior Thoughts

February 2023
Monks’s, oil on canvas John Monks

I’ve recently found myself staring repeatedly at a large (91 x 121 cm) painting of a room. It dominates the largest wall of a small city condo. It was made by the London-based painter John Monks and is thematically linked to a subject that has brought him considerable attention.

Physically the painting represents a fictitious space much larger than the one it occupies in the reality of my tiny living room. This may seem obvious, but it draws my looking out of my little space and into a larger world. This is the main technical function of the painting. Apart from the rich colour I’m drawn in by Monks’ perspective construction. Actual space is supplanted by his imaginative fictional space. There’s nothing new in any of this. It’s traditional Renaissance spatial construction. A framed illusion. I’ve been happily drawn in 10,000 times to as many paintings.

The appeal of this painting has little to do with its space making perspective. There is a subject here and it stimulates the life of the imagination. For me this painting concerns time. As in most of Monks’ architectural imaginings there is a distinct sense of being drawn into history. Time past. (In 2013, Monks exhibited a large and impressive painting in London titled ‘History’.) There are never figures. Human presence is always suggested by objects and furniture. Light streams in from offstage. These fictional spaces have a strong sense of narrative in the descriptive way of historical novels.

There are things to be described. Things collected and discarded. Things forgotten. As light (always a major presence and often suggesting an almost extra-terrestrial force!) enters I sense actors having left a stage. There is an irony here in that for all the figural absence there remains a very real presence. The artist. The heavily layered use of a palette knife brushed impasto application and tooled lines incised across wet paint, all speak of the artist’s role. The smooth textured floor is possibly the result of sprayed turpentine.

Monks’s, detail oil on canvas John Monks Detail

Detail

We are invited to imagine here. The emphatic red and green contrast of a suggested exterior (a landscape?) and textured red decaying walls for me suggest a tropical setting as does the reflected louver window. The overall oppressive red heat of the interior is balanced by reflected blue green light in a large mirror on the right.

Monks’s, detail oil on canvas John Monks Detail

Detail

Another aspect of time portrayed here is the presence of decay. The often-grand spaces Monks shows us have had a life. In this case a stripped bed, electric fan (?) and porcelain basin have been left behind. Torn drapery tumbles on a chair beneath the window. Again, human presence is implied. This is a room with history as one would discover in an isolated ruined mansion. The psychological and physical weave into a distinct image. There is a sense of social ruin. Not mere nostalgia. The social grandeur implied by these vacated spaces gives me a sense of long vanished privileged eras. There is something very British here. In this and many of Monks’ paintings there is a parallel vanishing point. It is to be found in his sense of time. In essence he gives us both of those well-worn iconographic tropes: the memento mori and the vanitas.

In this sense the painting is one on which to meditate as if it were a 17th century Dutch still-life.

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John Monks

John Monks
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