Joe Monteleone

JOE MONTELEONE is a Deafblind Artist with a current focus on printmaking and previous focus with painting. He is currently studying a Diploma in Visual Arts and has been creating art for 4 years. Joe has Usher Syndrome type 1, he is Deaf with a restricted visual field.

Joe likes his work to have a strong emotional connect with himself and how he experience and interacts with the world around him. As such he bases a lot of his works on his personal experiences and completes them one at a time. This helps him make sure that the work is strongly connected to an experience. Recently he has also begun to incorporate his Italian background in to his works, as well as the eye. This expresses his experiences better, but also gives the viewer a chance to gain some insight in to the life and experiences of Deafblind people, including barriers they face that the viewer may not have experienced.

While Joe started his art and studies with a focus on painting, he has completed a lot of painted works, he has recently changed to printmaking and in the future will work on linocut prints. His preference of this new art style of printmaking was inspired after a visit to the NGV when he saw some of Escher’s prints and was really absorbed in the works. After this he moved from painting on to printmaking.

Joe has had some of his works displayed in exhibitions presented by Able Australia. All these works were his paintings. The most recent display was in Hawthorn Town Hall, another was 2 years ago in Federation Square, and one happened 3 years ago at Herbert Smith Freehills.