NEW YORK, NY.- Akin to an improvisational jazz performance, Michael Barletta’s abstract paintings and drawings reflect a live moment in time and space. Each stroke of the brush or pen is a spontaneous gesture reflecting the artist’s visceral response to his immediate surroundings and inner emotions. “I try to capture a moment in time and space without imposing a message other than the arrangement of color and shapes that stir the emotions and engage the senses.” Michael translates the energy and sound of music, conversation and social interactions into swirling, organic shapes upon the surface of his large canvases and mylar sheets. Michael is an emerging artist at the vortex of a thriving underground art community in Syracuse, New York. Though self-taught, with no formal art education, Michael has been an avid student of the arts since childhood — absorbing and transforming the energy, chaos and emotion of the streets, the media and of his immediate envi