Monica Banks was born in Co Leitrim and is now based in Sligo City. She completed a higher diploma at IT Sligo and Galway University in Health Sciences. Working as a Nurse in Dublin and Sligo, practicing in Mental Health for Older People, she retired in 2010. Since retirement, she attended many creative workshops, and a PLC course in Art and Design in Sligo. Compelled to further investigate her creative instinct, she joined the Fine Art Programme ay IT Sligo in 2015 part time. Banks enjoys experimenting broadly with materials. She admires the Installations of Artist Cornelia Parker who by installing broken wooden fragments of a blown up shed create new meanings. www.tate.org.uk In the work titled “Order and Chaos”, she uses magazine paper as a building material, the form of which behaves like a jigsaw intersecting to become an intricate sculptural drawing. As the work grows it creates many negative spaces, these spaces being as important as the lines of the structure. Similarly, like Parker, who recreates the mundane, the socio-political theme of consumerism rolled inside the papers is pertinent. In contrast to the sculptural drawing, Banks further development of drawing is experimental, and she takes inspiration from artists such as Julie Mehretu. Banks gestural abstract drawings explore feelings of anxiety; marks are made with pencil, marker, charcoal, or whatever material comes to hand. These uncontrolled marks juxtaposed with the more considered lines that the sculptural works provoke.
