Brad Guarino has been an actively exhibiting artist for the past 25 years. He received a BFA from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, an MFA from the University of Connecticut, and did postgraduate study at Bulgaria’s National Academy of Art on a Fulbright Fellowship. Guarino maintains a studio in New London, CT and teaches at the University of Connecticut and Eastern Connecticut State University.

In my paintings and drawings, I contrive fictional worlds populated exclusively by men. The figures in my compositions are drawn or painted from photo-based collages made by recombining parts from images of different men. The collage process refers to the constructed nature of gender and how boys form their concepts of masculinity—by piecing together their idea of what it is to be a man based on a variety of male influences. The figures in my work exist in awkward relationship with one another, and their activities suggest unresolved narratives. The work explores the struggles that men face to not only understand their own maleness, but also to connect with one another.