Banks Violette's work includes "high-contrast drawings and onyx-like sculptures, full of references to satanic ritual murder and suicidal Judas Priest fans."

As a teenager Violette began using drugs and by 16 had dropped out of school and ran away from home. He had always been interested in hard-core heavy metal and fears of the music's power to provoke violence. Eventually he cleaned up and was working as a tattoo artist in Hawaii, where he decided that he wanted to pursue his career as an artist seriously. He went back to New York and received a BA from the School of Visual Arts, NYC and attended Columbia University's MFA Program.

"Violette is a present day history painter rendering the social landscape in which we live and the way the signs of our times breed and contain stories of violence."

The artist is part of a circle of young artists (including his friends Sue de Beer and Matt Greene) working with goth and horror narratives, but the most haunting element of his work is, in fact, his drawing technique, which produces ethereal, X-ray-like gradients from mere graphite. "They've got this slablike quality," he says, "but if people blow on them really hard, they'll just fall away."

Sources include:
"BANKS VIOLETTE: THE GROWN-UP GOTH" http://www.newyorkmetro.com/arts/articles/04/whitney/5.htm

"Banks Violette" http://www.teamgal.com/violette/

Kennedy, Randy "Master of the Dark Arts" The New York Times, Sunday, May 15, 2005