Robert Maniscalco
MASTER ARTIST
Unlock Your Artistic Potential
Mentorship is the fastest way to go from where you are today, to where you want to be!
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Mentoring Emerging Artists
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MEDIUMS: Charcoal | Drawing | Pastel | Oil
SPECIALTY: ✔ Technique
Consider putting Robert Maniscalco’s 45 years of experience to work for you. Those who have taken his in-person classes and workshops have gone on many successful painting careers all over North America. His “secrets” were no secret to the masters. Based on the Frank Reilly Method, Robert has adapted this amazing painting system to the needs of the modern realist. Based on his Power of Positive Painting Method (Amazon Best Seller) participants explore value-based “light on form” painting methods to create expressive, colorful, accurate professional level portraits and other genres. Robert can help you discover your creative and artistic niche through regular critiques and tailored homework assignments.
Also, as the P3 title suggests, Robert’s philosophy of teaching, as well as his approach to painting, is “positive.” Robert’s teaching is all about taking positive action, constantly moving forward in our process. He is proactive. Participants develop confidence through their reliance on knowledge, rather than some mysterious force we call talent. The task before us, painting form in a convincing manner, is normally presented as possible only to those “talented” few. Robert has taken talent out of the equation. In fact, he still hasn’t decided if he has any talent. Carefully directed and intentional work is the secret to success.
A musician must train her ear and practice to achieve command over her instrument. Likewise, artists must train their eye to see the subtle changes in values and develop a visual literacy and sensitivity if they want to begin to paint their vision. Robert has discovered the trick to seeing as the masters saw. Good news: it’s not rocket science! Robert empowers his students with ancient knowledge, so that with practice and application, they too may begin to see and paint like a master.
Most novice artists focus on a color’s hue, all the wonderful colors in the rainbow. Let’s face it, hues are more fun, like a kid in a candy store, right? Robert’s focus, however, is on breaking down the fundamentals, the ones most teachers tend to gloss over of skip altogether. Maybe they assume you know it because they do. Some people naturally see in subtle values, but most of us have to be trained to see them. To the untrained eye, the mastery of values seems like magic, but it really isn’t. Understanding how values are what really tell the story of what we see is where the real magic begins.
Robert’s EXPERTISE
Listed below are this Mentor’s specialty skills. Join this group if you want to grow in these areas.
Specialty: ✔ Technique
Technique:
Composition & Color
Technique Demos
Supplies and Tools – what to use, where to save, and where to spend
Studio Setup for Art Production
Providing Art Critiques
Teaching How to Self Critique
Marketing:
Shows & Exhibits
Artist Statement & CV
Marketing & Branding
Business:
Pricing Artwork
Selling Online
Licensing
“Mastrius is a perfect balance of accountability, community and fun.
It feels like family. Family that makes you a better you.”
~ Elizabeth, Emerging Artist
JOIN NOW
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If the group you’re interested in has a waitlist, you have the option to join another group to get started. When your group opens we can transfer you over.
Your Membership Includes (click here):
- Mentorship Session: Meet via video conference for a monthly 2-hour session with your Mentor and small group. You choose the mentor, we provide the group!
- Mid-Month Session: Meet via video conference for a 1-hour session with your small group and Navigator to connect, share progress, encouragement, and support.
- Weekly Events: Attend LIVE weekly events online, on hot topics like Finding Your Style, Composition & Critiques, plus master DEMOS. Access event recordings!
- MyStudio: Access your private online studio space equipped with business tools and Mentorship Session Recordings.
- Chat Group: Access your private online chat group to connect with your small group and Navigator (group facilitator) anytime.
- Discounts: Enjoy member discounts on LIVE and ON-DEMAND courses, art supplies, and more!
Emerging
Mentorship MembershipNext session: March 13, 2025
On the 2nd Thursday of every month
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM MDT Thu
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MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
ARTIST STATEMENT
I believe artists are our conscience, the teachers of society. The best artists can go deep within themselves to bring up the treasures, usually in the form of questions, which form a blueprint for a meaningful creative life. As an professional creative, I am always looking for ways to bring meaning and clarity into the world, to use my God given talent to inquire and to edify. Simply put, I love putting ideas and things together in ways that please and make sense to me. So, I share my journey, finding and expressing insight any way I can, to whoever is willing to engage in our shared time together on this planet, interconnected on our human journey. I do this through painting, writing, acting/directing, music/composing and teaching.
My goal as a visual artist, a painter, is to explore the full range of my medium, which is light. I have developed several bodies of work exploring a variety of structures and subjects, but the poetry of light on form keeps finding its way into my work. Light is the force which reveals the subtleties of nature, particularly the human condition, uncovering what it means to be human in our journey toward the light. This often-dramatic journey toward the light is a theme which runs through all my work, both literally and figuratively. We are all on a journey of survival and wonder. Together, we find ways to make the best of what we are given. Often there is struggle, heartbreak, loss. But there is always a new dawn that awaits us if we can hold on till then.
With this in mind, I plow the fields of portraiture, landscape and still life, surrealism, whatever moves me. What I keep coming back to is the many creative ways we find to overcome and grow from our shared journey through adversity into the light. For instance, I am continuing a series of paintings called The Quench Project begun during my vision trip to Haiti in November 2014, focused on desire and the ways we quench it. Also, I am continuing my Faces of the Lowcountry series of paintings, which is an exploration of the joy and tenacity of the Gullah people as they continue to define and celebrate their identity, a cultural symbol of survival and abundant hope for all people. I also have been into an Iconic Charleston Series, which is all about what makes my home of Charleston so magical for me. Another body of work, consisting of highly chromatic figurative renderings, called Chromo Sapient, is intended to push the envelope of color, while maintaining the chiaroscuro – the illusion of light on form. Expressive realism may be my dharma but I have also recently begun to explore the possibilities of narrative and poetry using color and light to transport the viewer of my work into other dimensions of reality. I am also the doppelganger of NETI, who is that he is not.
I also consider my work as a commission portrait artist a big part of my artistic journey. In fact, I am probably best known for my portraits. Together with my non commission portrait work, my journey can be summed up with an honest curiosity and respect for what makes nature and people tick. That’s what feeds my soul. I invite you to read my Bio for more about my story and the forces that drive my creative engine.
ARTIST BIO
Robert Maniscalco has been a professional creative his entire adult life. Born in 1959 in Detroit, he has lived in New York, New Orleans and currently in Charleston. His commission portraits and fine art are part of over a thousand collections throughout North America. In Detroit he hosted Artbeat on PBS and founded the Maniscalco Gallery. As a fine artist, he likes to work in multiple series. Perhaps his most enduring series is that of a commission portrait artist, immortalizing Supreme Court Justices as well as children and families. In 2014 Robert took on a vision-quest, called The Quench Project, in which he traveled to Haiti, producing numerous paintings, a documentary short (Out of Darkness), along with a companion book (Quench), juxtaposing the Haitian struggle with obtaining fresh water against our society’s obscene wealth inequality. Robert blogs on a wide range of subjects and written three other books, The Fishly and Point of Art. His fourth book, an Amazon #1 bestseller, is a full color drawing/painting method, called The Power of Positive Painting. He is an actor/director, writer/playwright, musician/composer and teacher, a former Adjunct Professor of fine art and theatre at Charleston Southern University and drawing illustration at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. Robert has expanded his creative milieu to include courtroom sketching, covering the Dylann Roof and Michael Slager trials in Charleston. His multi-disciplinary play, Vincent John Doe, received its world premiere, to rave reviews, during the 2018 and 2019 Piccolo Spoleto Festivals. He is now a regular exhibitor in the Piccolo Spoleto Outdoor Art Exhibition.
