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Artist Statement

I paint still lifes with oil on linen. In my paintings, objects are presented the size they actually are. My process involves sitting for hours, staring at the objects that I painting. This obsessive looking is integral to the finished paintings. Under this gaze, mundane objects take on complex meanings.

“Representing metaphors of female experience in her sweetly creepy still-lives, Portia Munson reveals something often unpleasant lurking beneath pretty surfaces. In each of her small

canvases a familiar object is found as if on a kitchen table late at night. Caught isolated in the dreamlike light and painted with the penetrating clarity of a child's gaze, a perverse humor permeates this surreal world. There is a dark, sensuous weight given equally to sex toys, pet toys and kid toys; things that are cute become ominous, the banal is sexualized, the appealing made repellent.”

—Fran Willing or “Girl,” Bust, Spring 2000

References

Artnet.com Review, 2007

“Gallery Gal,” Bust, 1998

“Nature Mort,” Catalog, 1994

Art In Review, NY Times, 1994

TENbyTEN Interview, 2000

Portia Munson CV