Born in New York in 1951, Adriano Manocchia received his Bachelors Degree from Pace University in New York City. After graduating, Adriano spent twelve years as a photojournalist traveling the world to cover news events. In 1984, he turned his attention to painting, adopting the painting techniques of the Old Masters and quickly received the attention of major collectors and art critics worldwide. A number of awards and special projects marked his recognition in the traditional art field as a foremost contemporary artist. For a number of years he has also enjoyed his role as an art professor at Long Island University.

Andriano says, "There is little doubt that I'm a visual person. I greatly admire, almost envy, the exquisite written word and those that have command of it. But I'm drawn to painting. There was no one particular person or event that started me down this path, no sudden epiphany that told me that I should paint. I just found myself on this road one day and took the journey. I have no regrets, considering the frustrations. But then if art was not filled with frustrations, it would not be art.

My paintings are my emotions; I paint what attracts me. And it is that incessant search for the visually stimulating that makes this voyage exciting. There is little more powerful to me than a sunset or a sunrise that bathes the landscape, nothing more pleasing than reflections on a stretch of winding river. Those are the images that become my art.

While painting places I've observed, I enhance my images through compositional means, bringing them closer to ideals upheld in a bygone age of painting. I often elongate my horizontal canvas trying to establish small panoramas that enclose the viewer in the quietude of scene.

I paint landscapes that have come from encounters with nature, trying not to make the paintings seem ideal. The light in my work has a photographic but painterly quality to it.

I leave the complexity of life behind in my work. I'm perhaps searching for a time now long gone in our world. If I can transpose these emotions in a painting, I've accomplished what I set out to do."