Biography  

Vincent Messina

Vincent's first teacher was his father, a well known painter, who was so respected by private collectors and connoisseurs that stories appeared about him in The New York Times and the Long Island Star Journal soon after his death in 1962.  The Messina family dates back to the famous fourteenth century artist Antonello Da Messina to the present day respected Italian painter Salvatore Messina, who's works were shown at The Modern Museum of Art in New York.

Before his father's death Vincent studied art and design at the prestigious Pratt Institute, where he received his Associates Degree and later went on to get his Bachelors.  He did his post graduate studies at The Art Students League and also studied design and his concept at The School of Visual Arts.

Most of his education was done at night out of necessity, he worked strictly in the visual arts field as an Art Director and Designer for some of the largest and well known advertising agencies on Madison Avenue, such as J. Walter Thompson, Norman Craig and Kummel and Daniel and Charles

In Atlanta he worked for James W. Squire as Creative Director.  Vincent won many awards in both New York and Atlanta, such as  the Golden Phoenix award and countless other awards for excellence in concept and design.  Vincent always painted while working in a commercial art environment.  He feels that this environment taught him discipline in his fine arts work.

Some of Vincent's drawings are hanging in the homes of some very famous people such as Barry Pederson who was co-writer for the motion picture  A Fist Full of Dollars and Lavern and Shirley Show and Cy Coleman who wrote the music score for Sweet Charity and many other Broadway shows.

Vincent Messina now resides in Hendersonville, North Carolina and his work is in The William Gordon Gallery.  However he wishes to move on to other galleries throughout the North and the South.  Vincent is very involved in the negative effects of climate change and has done a series of paintings on this topic.  He urges people to look at these websites, www.stopglobalwarmng.com and www.wecansolveit.org.