M. Monroe

We are all a little obsessed with her, don’t lie.

11.17.19 Pencil and chinese ink on Fabriano, 30″x25″

October Show Card

Stem Cells Smell like Tomato Soup

cancer: the mistress no one wanted

Daylight Savings 

Oil on Lenox – “Boyd”
Hair Loss and Luggage

There’s a heavy silence lingering in the air

Fire toothed trees torch the grey skies in protest

We all know what comes next 

Pressure on my chest as I notice the birds aren’t there to witness my labored breathing

I hate the sound of my thighs rubbing their fabric together as I push

Pull and

Gather

What’s left of a garden once well loved

Heavy boots sink into freezing mahogany mud while I dig

The friction between shovel and earth is a familiar sensation

They played bagpipes at my grandfathers funeral

Stars and Stripes and wood against grass and Irish poetry I didn’t understand

The potatoes are rotten this year

They pus green and smell like hospital beds

Perhaps we waited too long for the task at hand

Or the wet summer drowned their defenses

Or maybe it just wasn’t meant to be

I dig and blister my hands in the still air

Jolting every time I hit a rock

Waking my hibernating mind

“Stay here” the rock says

“Why?” I respond

“Because there’s work to do” it replays 

“And if you don’t prove the whole crop is waste, no one will believe you”

Sep portraits

Worked on these tonight. Big ole holiday weekend for me!

Closing of Philadelphia Summer Exhibition 

Have I made it? Nope. But I’m not stopping. My biggest show to date and I’m damn proud of myself. I roatated 15-20 pieces over the course of June and July including large scale oils. 

Some of the individual pieces

**SOLD** oil on Lenox “seventy times 7”

“Another body for your inbox” oil on Lenox 24″x40″

“Summer Horse” oil on canvas. Ballpark 36″x48″

Can’t remember what I named this one. Ink on Arches. Ballpark 20″x20″

The Faces Lost in our Moments

In process. Photos were sent to me privately. Photos that haunt the subject because of their state of mind and internal struggle. Oil on Lenox. 

Firenze: The city that owns my brush and therefore my heart

5+ weeks later and here I am: the last night in my student apartment alone in the summer heat of Florence. This city owns my art making and without it, I simply don’t exist. 

A fellow Skidmore Alumni, Alex Salerno, and I won the awards for Best Student Artwork. She is headed to Parsons in the fall to start her MFA. I will be applying to schools for my MFA shortly after. We shared a large studio and became close over the course of our stay. I look forward to seeing her work develop in the future. We share the same Skidmore faculty mentor who was a visiting professor with us at SACI. All three of us celebrated art making tonight by eating pizza and drinking house red at a local place where English is still a foreign language. 

All oils from my time here…each about 24″x40″ on Fabriano. Last two are a few meters in width and height on canvas. 

“Carriage Horse”

“Hot Rod”

“Figure 1”

“Figure 2”

“Figure 3”

“Dancer 1”

“Dancer 2”

“Dancer 3”

“Leftover”

“After words”

“Ballerina 1”

“Ballerina 2” 

Analog photography and mixed media:

“Untitled” – silver gelatin fiber print 

“Wall Study” – liquid light emulsion on Fabriano canvas paper 

“Walls 2” – mixed media on Fabriano rag paper

There’s always more…I need to take better photographs. 

I board a plane in a few hours and head back to the pre 2016 US election chaos. God have mercy on our idiot American souls.