April 1 - May 13, 2023
Reception: April 1, 2023 5-7pm
Artist Talk: April 15, 11am
The work of Nancy Monk embodies a knowing naïveté filled with symbolic simplicity. It is equally imbued with stick-figure purity and Japanese haiku, filtered through a natural sense of design perhaps inherited from her Scandinavian roots. She acknowledges formal inspiration from Paul Klee and Yves Klein, but her unaffected and fresh approach is wholly original and almost childlike in its sense of discovery. This new body of work, entitled walk + wood, was made during lockdown which, as Monk poetically explains, was filled with “long walks when I was frequently visited by white butterflies.” Flowers, trees, clouds and houses are delicately crafted on small canvases in thread, paint and thin strips of cloth, each of these elementary forms animated by stick feet ambling across a soft void. A series of tiny 3.75x2” paintings were the result of a Christmas gift of a box of thin black walnut and maple blocks of wood. Drippy white stars, gold leaf moons and rolling hills follow the natural patterns of their wood grain. Monk compares them to the art of Bonsai or Suiseki, capturing nature through a minimalist aesthetic.