Alyssa Monks has been able to channel her pain and grieving into creating powerful visual art. Her paintings are a unique blend of abstraction and realism, showcasing her gift for conveying the vulnerability of the human experience. She has quickly become one of my favorite artists. Alyssa's work has been featured in galleries from Manhattan to Germany, and, I think in part because she has found a profoundly personal way to convey the universal experience of loss. While it's often our knee-jerk reaction to run away from our grieving, imperfection, and pain, Alyssa reminds us that we're robbing ourselves of some profound inner growth when we do. What she ultimately discovered and now transfers to her work is this astonishing realization that loss is a passageway to an even deeper connection with ourselves and others. Every one of us will experience loss at some point in our lives and we have choices when we do---We can steel ourselves away from those feelings, or we can stay vulnerable and open to what those moments have to teach us. Alyssa and her astonishing body of work are living proof that choosing the latter will take us further faster.