John Brosio was born 1967 in Pasadena, California. He has been drawing for as long as he can remember and those earliest scribbles depict much of the same "off center" subject matter that concerns him today. Apart from various travels his life has been based in either Southern California where he was raised or Northern California where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California at Davis in 1991.
Learning under the guidance of artists such as Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Bunkall, Brosio was seduced away from his original aspirations toward a career in film and movie special effects, consequently, cinematic influences are apparent in his work. Known originally for his depictions of tornadoes, Brosio spent three seasons "storm chasing" out of Texas and will often go to such extreme measures in pursuit of familiarity with any of his chosen subject matter.
When asked about the iconic chaos of his work he says that is just life how he sees it: “New life is always happening at the same time as imminent death. So maybe a lot of these paintings are like a terrarium, an allegroy maybe of everthing we all have to contend with, pro and con.”
Influences for Brosio are numerous, but one thing that does fascinate him is cosmology, particularly the Holographic Principle. The Holographic Principal is the idea that all of the known universe is, to an extent, a simulation. Finding joy in the idea that the real world is completely imagined, it’s no surprise that his paintings are so surreal. To Brosio though, subject matter has little to do with the success of a painting. Its ability to codify the way in which things relate to one another in the universe is what really matters. Brosio thinks of painting as the pursuit of realizing some degree of surrender to those sensibilities through an orchestration of select relationships.
Various exhibitions and honors are highlighted by solo shows in both CA and NY, a survey of his work at the National Academy of Sciences Museum in Washington D.C. in 2008.