Welcome to the Studio 2014

Kent Monkman’s ‘Welcome to the Studio’ is made with oil paint, showing various characters posing within a studio space. The piece seems to be about artmaking itself, with all those figures arranged for display. There's something really seductive about the surface of this painting. Monkman handles the paint in a way that's both controlled and kind of wild. Look at the way the light catches the figures’ costumes and flesh, it’s very luminous. Yet, the brushstrokes are pretty direct and unblended. I love that! There is no attempt to hide the making process, like a lot of painters working today. And I also keep coming back to that backdrop of the birch trees, it pulls the whole composition together and adds this layer of artifice and theatricality. The space and figures really flatten-out as they get towards the background. It reminds me of some of David Hockney’s L.A. paintings from the 60’s. It has that same kind of awkwardness, and that’s why it feels so modern. Ultimately, this is a painting that invites you to linger, to question, and to revel in its own delightful ambiguity.