Founder & Director
Charles Miano (b. 1977) is an American Artist whose art explores both Eastern and Western human values, using a classic foundation and contemporary inspiration. Miano is an ARC Associate Living MasterSM. He is the Founder and Director of Southern Atelier Center for fine art in Sarasota, Florida and an advocate of the revival of Classically Inspired Representationalism.
Through his personal exploration of the nature of painting and of Nature itself, Miano champions representational art past and present. Imbued with life, vitality and spirit, his work has often been referred to as “visual poetry.” A lush palette, the dynamic use of light and shadow and an urgency of gesture are his most distinctive signatures. His brushwork — bold in color, complex in texture, sometimes structured, other times casual, driven in turns with directness or spontaneity — conveys the complicated relationship between hand and eye. His work as a whole — balanced precariously between opulence and humility — reveals, more startlingly, the ongoing battles within the self between emotion and reason in art as well as life. His great passion lies in creating those personal works, born of inter-spiritual reflections in his private studio that are equally wide in scope, whether drawings or paintings, from head studies to anatomical scales, figurative paintings to still-lifes.
Miano has always credited Nature as his primary educator. However, his formal Art studies began in the 1990s at the New York Art Department of an international publisher. There, he was mentored by accomplished Figurative painters, including noted Rembrandt scholar Allen Boyle and Korean Artist Tim Cho. Miano has attended classes at Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia with Nelson Shanks and has participated in workshop studies at The Florence Academy of Art in Florence Italy. Miano has also mentored with figurative muralist Joseph Brown. Since opening Southern Atelier in the early 2000’s, Charles Miano has continued his study of drawing and painting with the remarkable faculty he has assembled. His instructors have included some of the most renowned Representational Artists of our time, including Steven Assael, Robert Liberace, Mary Minifie, Stephen Perkins, Dan Thompson and Clayton J. Beck III. Charles Miano has placed enormous importance on studying the Old Masters. To that end, his passion has led him to copy the masters in Major Museums around the world, including The Louvre, The Uffizi, The Bargello, The Metropolitan, The Ringling and many others. In pursuit of excellence in his craft, Miano continues his studies to this day.
Through his atelier and as its “hands-on” director, Miano is widely recognized for his attentive, intensive teaching methods and generous support of emerging artists. There, he doggedly pursues in-depth, saturated studies in the tradition of the Old Masters. Miano also travels the globe, teaching workshops and lecturing on realist art and his own artistic methods.
Lean more about Charles at www.charlesmiano.com
