Art is a creative expression connecting the sincerity of the artist with the sensibility of the viewer. If the art fails to engage the viewer and evoke a reaction of any sort, whether it be a positive or negative emotion, than the artist has not successfully accomplished the fundamental purpose of art. The purpose of the artist is to achieve originality and integrity. For one’s art to stand apart from the rest, the artist must create a body of work that is unique. What is art? Art is in the minds of others, just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is of no importance whether art is admired or ridiculed, only that it is remembered.

At the age of thirteen, Michael began learning how to create graffiti-style lettering by practicing with colored markers on paper. Graffiti was simply an added extension of cartooning and provided a means to explore lines, shapes, colors and letter design in a new way. The remaining teenage years Michael kept his focus on graffiti art and the development of his cartoon characters, letter styles and color schemes in his sketchbook.

After high school Michael attended a county college in New Jersey as a graphic design major. After completing his studies, he applied to the School of Visual Arts in New York, as a cartooning/illustration major. While attending S.V.A., Michael combined the American pop culture of urban art with his caricature-like, figurative drawings. The “Wildstyle” letter design, with its highly stylized alphabetical abstractions and decorative embellishments transformed into the dynamic energy of the abstracted human figure. The visual power derives from a technique illustrating a harmonious interaction among bold contour lines, and shapes filled with vivid colors. Within the contours of the hard edged shapes are intense contrasting colors that interact with each other, creating a moving energy that powerfully projects outward to the viewer.

The Table Series is a body of work still in progress. These particular paintings depict a lower-middle class Italian-American family who spent a lot of time around the kitchen table. The kitchen table in each painting represents the institution of the family unit, the tradition of culture, and the important role it played as the gathering place for the family to come together in times of celebration. The objects on the tables have a deeper meaning that go beyond culture. Some of the objects and half eaten food act as a vanita or memore-morte signifying death for those family members who had passed on and the incessant disappearance of the present into the past. People and moments come to an end but time does not. The theme is not only an insight about the artist’s childhood memories and cultural experiences, but also a reflection for all of us of how simple things used to be. The source of the inspiration is the family photo albums. To the artist they are more than photos they are little windows of captured moments in time, where the loud conversations, and laughing can still be heard, and the love felt. The primary intent of the artist is to share these moments with the public hoping that they will also feel the spirit and energy of this particular family and transcend the visual images they see into an aesthetic connection about their own family moments from the past.