About

An impossibly handsome and rugged male artist, approximately 40 years old, poses happily in his messy studio with in progress paintings behind him on the wall and a table of paints, brushes, and various tools in front of him.
Artist and painter Michael Covello working in his studio. Circa 2026, age 40.

Michael Covello, born 1986 in Oyster Bay, NY, is an internationally exhibiting interdisciplinary contemporary artist. Covello studied at the School of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University and the University of South Florida. He currently lives and works in Pennsylvania and New York. He is a Professor of Art at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a focus in the areas of Painting. Additional teaching expertise is in Drawing, Foundations, Animation, Visual Storytelling. He coordinates the NYC Immersion Program and Italy Abroad Program.

Covello has been twice nominated by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for awards and exhibitions and is the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Arts Council of Hillsborough County, a merit grant from the Vermont Studio Center, a Work and Families Fellowship from Wassaic Projects, and a Mid-Atlantic Creative Fellowship at Millay Arts. In 2022-2023, Covello was a Clements Research Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and an artist-in-residence at Yaddo.

Recent exhibitions include Drawing Discourse: Exhibition of Contemporary Drawing at UNC Asheville and Audio Visual Frontiers at UC Riverside, and Covello has exhibited at other venues such as the New Art Center, Boston as a Curatorial Opportunity Winner, the Florida Biennial at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, and the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art at the Orlando Museum of Art.

His award-winning animations have been screened internationally at Currents2025, the London Independent Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Buffalo International Film Festival, the Sydney Underground, the New York Independent Cinema Awards (awarded Best Animation in 2021), the Amsterdam International Short Film Festival (awarded Best Animation in 2021), and the Los Angeles International Film Festival’s IndieShortFest, (nominated for Best Audio Mixing in 2019). In 2025, he was awarded Best Animation at Film Invasion LA, the Ridgefield Independent Film Festival, and the New jersey International Film Festival.

 

EMAIL 
mtcovello [at] gmail [dot] com

 

Download a PDF version of my CV.

 

ALT WEBSITES:

CANDLE FLY FILMS    ////   A collaborative production studio that I run with Artist/Animator Elizabeth Schneider.

 

 

 

 

Michael Covello, artist, painter, printmaker, animator, writer, screenwriter, poet, sound artist, 2022
Michael Covello (artist, painter, printmaker, animator, writer, screenwriter, sound artist), circa 2022 at age 36 while at residence in Yaddo.

 

 

An impossibly handsome male artist, approximately 35 years old, poses happily in his messy studio with in progress paintings behind him on the wall while at residence at VCCA.
Artist and painter Michael Covello working on a large painting at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts VCCA in 2021, aged 35.

 

A working shot of an impossibly handsome and rugged male artist, approximately 29 years old, with in progress paintings and installations.
Artist and painter Michael Covello working on an installation at Kutztown University in 2015.

 

An impossibly handsome baby-faced male artist, approximately 27 years old, poses with attitude in his messy studio with in progress paintings behind him on the wall while at residence at USF.
Artist and painter Michael Covello working in his studio in Tampa, FL in 2013 at age 27.

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