Ed Musante paints animals, primarily birds, on cigar boxes to a wonderfully engaging effect. Whichever bird he chooses to paint, be it a tanager, an owl, a kestrel, or a quail, they are winsome and beautifully rendered, which when juxtaposed against the tenebrous graphics of cigar boxes leads viewers to draw their own enchanting conclusions. Each piece is an artful treasure.
“Other artists used cigar boxes, such as Gauguin and Richard Diebenkorn,” says Musante, "although their styles are very much their own." He also recalled hearing that at some period French painters painted on cigar boxes as a protest to easel painting. Musante’s use of cigar boxes feels at times like a nod to pop art in its incorporation of the advertising graphics. “It’s no longer a cigar box,” says Musante. “It’s something else and the painting is working with the graphics—sometimes more, sometimes less. But, it’s turning into something other than what it was intended for.”
Ed Musante was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He grew up primarily in San Francisco, California and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Art History. He had various stints in West Africa working for the Peace Corps in Niger and the US Public Health Service Measles and Smallpox Eradication Program in Dakar, Senegal. Following 6 months of traveling Europe in a VW van, Musante attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He also received an MFA from the University of Idaho. Before Musante passed in 2022, he lived in Tucson, Arizona.