Don’t tell Alyssa Monks these paintings look like photographs.
For now, the Brooklyn artist will take the picture-perfect compliment — but she wants to make it clear that she’s not out to be a human Polaroid camera.
“It’s not up to me what I get labeled,” said Monks, who rejects the tag “photorealism” for her stunning work. “I think the term ‘photorealism’ is about using a photograph as their subject. I’m using the photo as a loose reference.”
The 31-year-old New Jersey native can’t deny that she’s getting plenty of ink for her paintings — which carry remarkable photolike qualities — whether it’s on newsprint or computer screens. London’s Daily Mail ran a huge spread of her work last week.
“There’s no desire to try to make it so smooth and look brushless” Monks told The Post yesterday. “If in fact it looks that real, it’s a testament to the time and detail. It’s not intended to look photorealistic.”
The artist is particularly fond of her paintings that depict water drops and steam in a shower stall.
“It’s about using paint and playing with colors,” said Monks, who teaches at the New York Academy of Art and Montclair State.
New Yorkers can get a look in March at Monks’ show at the DFN Gallery on the Upper East Side.
“There’s a lot of confusion about my work,” Monks said. “People see little 3-by-5 images on a computer screen, and it looks like a photograph. The reality is the paintings are not small. Some are eight feet wide, and there’s a lot of paint, a lot of surface.”