MICHAEL DE BRITO: ONE-MAN EXHIBITION
OCTOBER 29 - NOVEMBER 29, 2009

If you call her Nana, Nonna, Abuela or Bubby, you surely recognize the overriding inspiration in Michael De Brito's paintings. She is Grandma, Ávo and in De Brito's case, the matriarch and center of the family. In his tribute "Novela", sitting at her kitchen table, she is like a sun in a galaxy where all objects revolve in her orbit. The bits and pieces collected over a lifetime fixed in their place and illuminated by her existence. It is the life and human interaction found in this kitchen - in this universe - that has informed and nurtured De Brito's work. He captures the expressive faces found across the table and records all the bric-a-brac as if he were mapping it out for posterity. Michael De Brito is an explorer in his family's life, as he is at once one of them and a thing apart. For many of us it is familiar territory, for some of us an introduction to somewhere unknown.

Michael De Brito received his degree from Parsons School of Design and did postgraduate work at New York Academy of Art. Since 2004, he has been awarded Best of Show from the Audubon Artist Annual Exhibition as well as the Allied Artists of America 92nd Annual Exhibition. A Pollack-Krasner Grant recipient, De Brito's first one-man exhibition was recognized with a review in ArtNews Magazine. His work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London and at the Presidential Museum in Lisbon. Michael De Brito is not yet thirty years old.