The Beautiful and The Grotesque
Using traditional techniques through a self-taught eye, Dominic Montello dives into inspiration from the painters of the Golden Dutch Age. Exploring the world between objective and spiritual thought, his paintings depict inhuman figures put in dramatic poses, often adorned with halos and robes. Dominic describes his work as “riding that line between the beautiful and the grotesque” confronting the tendencies of human self-worship and capturing the forms that it can take.
“We rarely, if ever, scrutinize ourselves in an objective manner. These works explore and expose from different angles–and often with a healthy dose of humor–how we hubristically think of our environments as predictable and orderly, while thinking of ourselves as brave, moral and independent.” - Dominic Montello
Dominic Montello is a contemporary oil painter based in Seattle, Washington. Originally from Portland, Maine, Dominic moved to Seattle five years ago. After stepping down from his job as an environmental engineer, Dominic rediscovered his love of painting and spent a couple of years building his portfolio, then began displaying his art around Seattle. Deeply immersed in the philosophies of contradicting thoughts he explains, “It’s not about exposing how they contradict each other; it is about showing how the spiritual and objective planes of thought coexist.”
To the naked eye one may first assume, as many have done before them, that contradicting thoughts are what make the world of art go round. Yet Dominic's interpretation is quite the opposite—focusing on how the unseen forces within our realities influence our environments and constantly shift the balance between spiritual and objective planes of thought that are a driving factor in our uniquely human experience.
Reminding us of the famed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Beautiful and The Damned” but with a Dominic Montello twist, he explores ideas of money and decadence as well as morality in love. The beautiful and the grotesque explores our general human tendency to overtly and uncritically idealize both ourselves as well as others and at the same time, the unseen and underlying forces that subconsciously compel us.
“[Man] is locked up in this consciousness, and nature has thrown away the key.” - Nietzsche, On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
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