Vincent Giarrano

Realist painter and former comic-book artist Vincent Giarrano divides his compositions into three categories: “people,” “places,” and “things.” New York City’s streets, cafes, apartments, and artists’ studios serve as the settings for many of his oil paintings; he has featured SoHo’s iconic iron and stone architectural facades, fashionable women on sidewalks or at home, and studied still lifes that evoke cafés, restaurants, and home kitchens. He credits his work in comics—drawing such timeless superheroes as Batman, Spiderman, and Aquaman—as helping to shape the sense of a story that characterizes his paintings. “I find narrative is a huge part of what I do,” says Giarrano, who prefers to leave his paintings open-ended and ambiguous, allowing viewers to complete each one of his vignettes with stories of their own imagination.