I began to draw before I learned how to read. It was obvious to me until Junior High that I was going to be a painter. But in High School I got hooked on philosophy. Even so, I never quit drawing and painting. I think of art as my spiritual practice (I don't have a religion).
The satisfaction I get from painting vies with all the rest of life’s pleasures. Painting for me is a psychic phenomenon -- something is materialized out of my head! Mind you, there are dark nights of the soul in making art. But you take a chance and it starts to come to life – and you feel more alive. And on you go until that moment it all comes together – color, value, form. It’s then that heightened (really exquisite) pleasure goes through you, followed by an afterglow. Art is my guardian angel -- always there for when I need a vacation from the real world.
 |
| Joseph of Copertino |
The satisfaction I get from painting vies with all the rest of life’s pleasures. Painting for me is a psychic phenomenon -- something is materialized out of my head! Mind you, there are dark nights of the soul in making art. But you take a chance and it starts to come to life – and you feel more alive. And on you go until that moment it all comes together – color, value, form. It’s then that heightened (really exquisite) pleasure goes through you, followed by an afterglow. Art is my guardian angel -- always there for when I need a vacation from the real world.
To purchase artwork contact Michael Grosso at grosso.michael@gmail.com
 |
| Boys at the Beach |
Boys at the Beach
Based on a photo I took of two kids at the Jersey shore in the 1980s.
 |
| Misery Meets Misery |
This painting does not exist. It is amalgamated from images drawn, photographed, or remembered from Rome and Florence.
Misery Meets Misery does exist- encoded in digital form.
Art in the twilight zone.
 |
| Portrait of Joseph of C. |
Portrait of Joseph of C.
This portrait of Joseph may be used as an icon of divine self centeredness. Let the lamp affix its beam, as Wallace Stevens put it.
I maintain it is a strange fact of nature that by means of a certain focus of attention, it is possible to bend gravity.
Concentrate on that idea. Who knows about the limits of the human will?
 |
| Abstraction Without a Name |
Abstraction Without a Name
I keep faltering on giving this painting a name.
Call it a nameless abstraction.
Still, it illustrates a motif about space, which further examples may appear later on the line-up.
 |
| Still Life With Time as a Subject |
Still Life With Time as a Subject
There is also a hint of serene drunkenness wrestling with the demon of time.
So can we say that art is about making life still; time stops. Is that a needed service? Finding the still center of the whirling cosmos?
 |
| Time Frozen in Pictorial Space |
Time Frozen in Pictorial Space
Drawing of After-Dinner Scene
 |
| Faces Before the Law |
Faces Before the Law
This drawing is part of series begun from a publication called
Crime Times, cost one dollar, with pages and pages of mug shots of people arrested for (mostly) minor offenses. I just focus on their images and try to bring out some quality of humanity. No names or specifics, just images of the human face.
 |
| Faces Before the Law-2 |
Before the Law
 |
| Faces Before the Law-3 |
Before the Law
 |
| Faces Before the Law-4 |
Before the Law