Yes, man is capable of anything; or the human spirit is, as these paintings give us all-inspiring evidence of. It is the power of the artist wielding the tool of self-expression, the only weapon at his command; portraiting his inner feelings, frustrations, anguish, despair and compassion for mankind. The necessity for expression so urgent he does it with any medium at hand, including cheap stationery, broken eggshells, plain sugar. Is it any wonder that Trantino should paint horripilating heads, one-eyed, ghoulish monsters who stare numbly into space, their unique eye red-rimmed with pain? No, as he is daily confronted with the cold, impersonal State, the same that can pull hypocritically the starting switch of the electric chair, or the atomic bomb.

 We identify with these paintings, as if gazing into a mirror because we are all prisoners today, even those of us outside, the so called “free”; all prisoners of our Time, it’s uncertainty, dead conventions, insanities, violence, mass media, and conniving politicians.

 There is also a certain joy in Trantino’s paintings. First, the joy of a man who has found himself, since he first started to paint and write when in a solitary sell in State Prison, on Death Row, where he stayed for eight years. And also the joy of the creator, the man who found the miracle of beauty of his fingertips, and found inner freedom. The man who found he could create his own world.

Excerpts from the release about Trantino’s one-man show at Bateau-Lavoir Gallery in New York, 1989