"Art remains a strong contender of how we share our thoughts and ideas. Its power is in the possibility it offers to open, expand and maybe even change our minds. This and a primal urge to make things are the main motivators that drive me to continually search, learn, and generate new ways to express myself in the work I make.

I have spent half my life as a painter and the other as a photographer. It feels only natural to me to combine these disciplines. The use of materials in my work is calculated and usually layered. I am often looking for avenues of the unexpected, and just as I like to be surprised, provoking a participant to new and perhaps, unexplored territory is my aim."

A self-taught artist from Paterson, NJ, Alfonse Pagano was an assistant to Len Lye in the 1970s before attending The School of Visual Arts and the New School in NYC. His work has been shown across the country at galleries and museums, such as the Laguna Gloria Art Museum in Austin, Texas, and is held in various collections, including the Carnegie Mellon Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

In 1990 Pagano took up photography and co-authored a photojournalism book, DREADS, in 1999. With an introduction from Alice Walker the book published by Artisan/Workman Press is on its eighth printing.

A move from NYC to Newark, NJ in 2011 inadvertently led to a development of a new technique forging both disciplines of painting and photography.