Michael Fontana resides in Warren, New Jersey and has been painting for most of his life. Nearly 30 years ago, after many years of painting in various styles using different media, Mr. Fontana settled into abstract expressionism, and specifically, action painting. In this style, Mr. Fontana found a technique that enabled him to translate his artistic visions into reality in an exciting, inspiring, and entertaining way.

Mr. Fontana’s art has been primarily inspired through his life-long involvement with winter outdoor experiences, including arctic living, mountain climbing and winter camping. In these settings, he was finally able to clearly see and hear the images and sounds of the subtle world. It was during the 1980’s while living in Alaska that he discovered the painting style that could successfully capture this subtle world and that he has employed almost exclusively in all of his work up to the present.

Mr. Fontana’s tendency is to create large-size works, in an effort to allow the viewer to become completely immersed visually both within and on the canvas. The medium of choice is semi-gloss, latex enamel house paint on cotton canvas, primed, or unprimed, stretched over wood frames. The paintings are created on a horizontal plane, enabling the artist to apply the color vertically in a careful and controlled fashion. In this way, the perfect balance of application is achieved, an important component of the artist’s work. In fact, it is this balance that presents the most important aspects of his paintings: color coordination and line density.

Mr. Fontana’s artistic goal in the planning, preparation and creation of his paintings is to generate a fully-immersive canvas that provides a new dimension for personal meditation and contemplation. A dimension that has form but is formless, that has an immeasurable scale and is infinite in depth. The result of this methodology is to present the viewer with a perfect visual medium, enabling unfiltered and unimpeded conscious streaming so as to provide serious and deep contemplative thought in the search for answers to the human experience and the meaning and purpose of both the understood and unknown universes.

Mr. Fontana’s methodology relies on combining warm and cool tone natural colors in conjunction with black and white, in a strictly uniform application on the canvas. The balance and placement of lines and colors presents a universal form and dimension. The result is a painting that does not allow the viewer to be drawn into any single area within the work; rather, his style’s success relies on the painting having no focal point distractions but a complete visual immersion. This immersive form allows the individual to enter an advanced contemplative state, open now to encountering consideration and evaluation often masked by the noise associated with modern life.

Now, for the first time in 30 years, Mr. Fontana is publicly presenting his work, including his most recent and largest scale paintings along with earlier works, including those completed during his time in Alaska. The artist’s style is consistent throughout, in space on the painting and in time.