Bibliography

Head Girl Head Boy: Paintings by Peter Monkman intro by Kathlene Soriano

The work holds a sense of promise, capturing someone on the brink of their adult lives, as well as dreaminess that also speaks of the connection with the artist and hopes for them as individuals...

Kathlene Soriano (broadcaster and writer)

for a copy contact artist

Changing Face Contemporary Portraiture by Peter Monkman Watts Gallery publication 2008

"What Monkman successfully does is to challenge these views, not with any simplistic conclusion, but thoughtfully. What makes these ideas so engaging is Monkman’s skill as an artist, he exploration of his medium as a vehicle of succinct expression. These paintings which we remember, for their strikingly bold, unerringly direct, but which have great subtlety, where vulnerability is apparent alongside youthful arrogance. These paintings stay with us and we consider their haunting beauty and the subject which they so eloquently explore.”

extract from Peter Monkman: The Physiognomy of Faces by Mark Bills curator of the Watts Gallery 2008 now director of Gainsborough House.

“…beautiful concentration on how we are……a future Hall of Fame in the Spirit of the GF Watts original….”

Sandy Nairne, Director National Portrait Gallery speech on opening of Changing Face, Watts Gallery

2009 BP Portrait Awrd NPG publications 1st prize winner

2014 BP Portrait Award NPG publications essay by Julian Donaldson regarding portrait sitting

“Peter Monkman has brought his characteristic etherial qualities and inventiveness to a portrait which will no doubt be hugely popular with visitors “ Des Violaris Director of UK Arts and Culture , BP. 2013

"It is incredibly bewitching and beguiling’"Charlotte Mullins (critic and art historian, judge BP Portrait Award 2009)

"Monkman displays an obvious understanding of his subject and incredible articulate paint handling"

(Sarah Mayhew writing on the show Uncanny Likeness for the Oxford Mail,

“In painting a new portrait of Julia Donaldson, Peter Monkman has created a wonderful sense of Julia’s brilliant imagination..” Sandy Nairne Director of the National Portrait Gallery 2013

The freshest looking image reflects a recent vogue for emblems of warped childhood. Peter Monkman’s Joe-boy – an orange baby with an old man’s face is petite, astute and darkly amusing…”

( Martin Herbert, Time Out on BP Portrait Awards 1999)