Digital images are becoming the de-facto way we perceive and process the world — surface, and superficial virtuosity as self-defining, momentary meaning. This creates a problem: how to ensure that physical painting is experienced as a very different form of engagement, and their framing as more than the inferred edges of an iMac screen. Although I have taken from the digital world, it is to confront this imagery with physical, organic paintings. – William Monk
William Monk’s landscape paintings continue the legacy of artists who sought to convey their impression of these natural settings, rather than depict them literally. Though often mysterious and just hinted at, his subjects convey a sense of danger, harm, or unnerving distance, seen here in Bloom. The tender, naïve painting style adds an unsettling tone to what appears to be a nighttime image of a far-off explosion. Monk received the Jerwood Contemporary Painters Prize (2009) and the Royal Award for Painting, Netherlands (2005), and his work has been exhibited in the US, UK, and Europe.