Richard Ventre

I completed a forty five year career as a theatrical Scenic Artist in 2012. I was a Master Scenic Artist on more than fifty movies including the Emmy Award winning Death of a Salesman, the Academy Award winning Sleepy Hollow, and completed that theatrical career painting for the Metropolitan Opera.

The creative medium now is photomontage and, working with the painted female nude, is exclusively in the school of Dramatic Narrative. By applying decades of theatrical experience, the images created depict the female nude set within a unique context. Each work is rendered from multiple images that are digitally woven together.

Since 2006 our work has been exhibited throughout the Northeast. The prints have earned numerous awards, including several Best in Show and First Place honors, and several of the series have had their own solo shows.

In 2023 the series OBJET was exhibited in a solo exhibit at the Marblehead Arts Association, King Hooper Mansion, Marblehead, MA. Twenty one large prints occupied the two galleries on the second floor of the mansion. Described as “an eye opening solo exhibit”, the works, rendered as opposing pages in an open magazine, are a satirical exposé of objectification: the woman and the object considered equally as objects of desire.

Each of the women represented in these images, whether before the camera or assisting in the Studio, have been the soul of what our narratives tell. It is their experiences and the belief in what they are saying that create the breath within each interpretation. It has allowed us to create a most unique ensemble and an enriching body of work. For that experience, I cannot thank them enough.