MICHAEL COSTELLO 1957 Boston, MA, US

b. 1957 Boston, MA Lives and Works in Boston, MA Michael Costello is an established painter who has exhibited in Provincetown for over 30 years. Costello studied at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston under Barnett Rubinstein working as an optical realist with a focus on 20th century objects and their iconographic place in history. Costello was the first recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Masters to Byrdcliffe, NY. Costello currently splits his time between his studio in Boston and Provincetown where he continues to search for our innate humanness through his figures Figure The work explores the anxiety of humankind in the twenty-first century. Its goal is to capture the human body in all its vulnerability by celebrating our perceived flaws. To demystify the nude, one has to find beauty in the grotesque, yet in an affectionate manner. My subjects are imperfect and I do not flatter them. They are painted with emotional honesty. Their nudity becomes a vehicle for presenting the psychology of the sitter over the formality of portraiture, allowing me to discover and pierce the unconscious. I choose my models for their ability to inspire empathy for our universal humanness, and their capacity to confront the truth within ourselves as to what we believe to be beautiful. www.aglutinart.blogspot.com