Tomas Manto is a Charlottesville native artist currently studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. He works primarily with oil paint and photoshop. His work focuses on themes of love, friendship, and companionship, but they are also influenced by film, and there are references to this throughout his body of work, both explicitly and subtly. The artist encourages viewers to consider what they personally take away from each piece, not what the piece is necessarily trying to convey to them. There are no wrong answers when looking at Tomas’s work, only opportunities to connect with the subjects and object portrayed.

Everything in the show is for sale, and the artist appreciates any and all support during these difficult times.

Thank you and enjoy the show!
Tomas Manto

tmanto@risd.edu
https://portfolios.risd.edu/tmanto6b76

At The River

This work is a collage of color ink prints.

PRINTS are AVAILABLE the original is SOLD. 11×14. $30/print.

Bed Painting

This painting was the finalization of the body of work I made in my last semester on campus. It is a vibrant expression of dreams, with many hidden details.

42×54. $1900.

Birthday 1

This is a painting of my friend sitting on the couch in front of the wall where we projected Drag Race.

Digital painting, prints AVAILABLE. 9×16. $30/print.

Birthday 2

This painting is of a photo of a photo at a Polish bar. It wasn’t a birthday but it could have been.

Digital painting, prints AVAILABLE. 9×16. $30/print.

Clear As Day

Sorry if you don’t like subtitles. You are entitled to your wrong opinion.

Oil. 26×42. $800.

Garden

When my advisor saw this painting he said that it was “obvious that I wanted to study abroad in Rome”. He was completely right.

Oil. 54×42. $1800.

Jewelery

This painting is a trompe l’oeil of an arrangement of jewelry over a landscape. In the sky and the ground are ghosts of other objects, painted in and then out again, that express a passage of time.

Oil. 36×48. $900.

Ostia

This is a photoshop painting of Cupid and Psyche embracing at Ostia Antica in Italy.

Prints AVAILABLE. 9×16. $50/print.

Smote

A funny painting with a funny title. This painting combines several images into a single chaotic space and just asks the viewer to have fun with it.

Oil. 26×42. $800.

Trompe l’oeil and poem

This painting is a trompe l’oeil of my studio wall. The text reads: “I knew at a pretty young age that I wanted to be an artist so one night I was sharing a bed with my grandpa I asked him if he knew any artists he told me about this one really quiet boy he knew in school who drew horses, like, specifically horses, really well. I imagine him now as, like, this gay teenager in Hinkley in 1955 and I think about running my hands through his soft brown hair and then.. leaning towards him on the bank of the creek between his parents fields, its far enough, and kissing the side of his mouth but, jeez, like, who am I? What have I inherited from Ohio and all that pain we caused? I imagine this boy and it is so hard to see him alive and I think about my baby and he can draw horses, like, specifically horses, really well but can I imagine myself alive? I have to, I have to “.

Oil. 36×48. $1000.