Peter Monkman is an award-winning figurative artist whose career spans over three decades of exploration into identity, perception, and the nature of appearance. Monkman came to prominence in the late 1990s with his "domestic doodles," a series of automatic drawings and paintings that tracked his everyday life as a teacher, young father, and film enthusiast. These works were characterised by fields of spontaneous mark-making, capturing the rhythm of his daily existence. A pivotal moment in Monkman's career was winning the prestigious BP Portrait Award in 2009 with his painting, The Changeling, a depiction of his 12-year-old daughter. This work marked a significant shift in his focus, moving towards how a portrait can reveal more complex notions of identity beyond a mere likeness. This concept was further developed in a series of ethereal paintings of his autistic nephew, which challenged the artist to depict an ungraspable internal life and explore the complexities of human perception.Monkman's work is deeply informed by both historical and contemporary art. His series, Face Value, saw him exhibit portraits of school-age children from both UK private and state schools together, creating a dialogue around how the identities of "youth" can be viewed equally. His interest in the mind, perception, and sensation has led to extensive experimentation across various media. He often creates automatic mono-prints and marks as a surface from which features can emerge, layering carefully observed portraits with further marks, doodles, erasures, and glazes. This technique creates a rich dialogue between form and meaning, revealing the layers of an individual's identity. Born in Gloucester and raised in County Durham, Monkman's artistic journey was profoundly influenced by his environment and early experiences. The liberating energy of the punk movement, combined with regular visits to his mother’s hometown of Aarhus, Denmark, exposed him to the freedom of Scandinavian expression and abstraction. Artists from the CoBrA group, such as Asger Jorn and Karel Appel, have been a recent reference point in his more abstract, spontaneous work. Throughout his career, Monkman has led numerous art trips to global cultural hubs like New York, Los Angeles, and London, absorbing influences from the Young British Artists (YBAs) of the early 90s to more current trends in contemporary art. This diverse "mixing pot" of influences has provided a rich source from which he has forged his own creative direction, a journey that began with his first exhibition in 1996 and continues to this day. Monkman has been a practising and teaching artist for 37 years. He was Director of Art at Charterhouse from 2004 to 2024 and is a member of the Charterhouse Art Network, as well as collectives such as the Contemporary British Portrait Painters (CBPP) and, more recently, the Common Ground group of artists. After working in Surrey, Lancashire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, and Northamptonshire, he now lives and works as a full-time artist in York, North Yorkshire.