Artist in Residence Project, April 2009

A native of the Dominican Republic, Tio's painting skills have been employed for a wide variety of creative projects, including the feature films Spiderman 1 and 2; Broadway shows Beauty and the Beast, Rent, and Miss Saigan; Old Navy & Hershey's commercials; and window displays. He has been commissioned to paint portraits, including one of Diane Von Furstenberg. Since 2005, Miguel Tio has worked as an art teacher for the New York City Studio in a School, in addition to maintaining a studio and producing new work.

Miguel Tio conducted workshops for the Children's Learning Center and students in the Early Childhood Education program during his Artist-in-Residence program at Pennsylvania College of Technology. As a member of the Society for Art of Imagination, Tio's work was included in the popular Where Science Meets Art exhibition held at The Gallery at Penn College in 2007. Tio also exhibited a small collection of original portraits in the gallery.

Miguel Tio's paintings are full of powerful energy and symbolism. His work has been likened to Renaissance paintings with his dramatic use of form and light, realism, perspective, and humanist concerns. Tio often employs the Mische technique in his artwork, a method for creating the illusion of realism and considered one of the secrets of the Renaissance.