Charles Miano (b. 1977) is an American Artist whose art explores humanistic values, using a classic foundation and contemporary inspiration. Miano is an ARC Associate Living Master. He is the Founder and Director of Miano Academy of 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.