[This post on contemporary American painting is a direct follow-up of another one on my other blog: A Painting with Soul: ‘Morning After II’ by Alyssa Monks.]

The oil below was painted ten years before the other, and does not seem as accomplished to my eyes; neither technically nor aesthetically (but is still very good!). The colours are colder, the sheets, cover and pillows, much messier, there are two (somewhat inopportune) square night-tables at the sides of the bed, the frame is more open and the point of view, higher, as if the painter was standing up over the feet of the bed.

Since here there is a man sleeping (at least, it is probably a man) and the woman is absent from the bed –painting the canvas?–; since the light comes from the opposite side, or almost, and there are a jar and an alarm-clock at view, the general feeling is very different: more earthly, less cozy and serene, not as pure, spirited and dreamlike (even if when I posted it, past June, my own personal situation made me describe other appretiations: sadness, solitude and loss).

Maybe the night before had been more agitated, but –so I fancy– not as fulfilling. Furthermore, were I the absent person, I would not feel like climbing back to this bed of 2004 as swiftly and gladly as I would have done to the other one, of 2014.

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Alyssa Monks is an American painter, born in New Jersey, 1977.

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