Art at the Library

Manuel Monge’s artwork celebrates the unacknowledged beauty of the American suburbs. Featuring common places like coffee shops and empty street corners, Monge’s work highlights the extraordinary features he finds within these ordinary places. Believing that love can be sensed in more than just happy faces and sunny days, Monge paints the love he sees manifested in familiar places on cloudy days or rainy nights. Evoking melancholy and nostalgia, the paintings in this exhibition serve as a reminder of the everyday, quiet places that viewers may regard in their own lives.

Manuel Monge is a Peruvian American realist artist. Although he’s had a long and successful career as an HR leader, which has taken him to five countries and three continents, painting and drawing have been an essential part of his life. Monge lives in New Jersey and works out of his studio in East Orange. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibits in several galleries in New Jersey. Monge is currently an MFA student at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.