John Brosio (born in 1967 in Pasadena, California) attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and received a BFA from University of California at Davis. After an internship at Industrial Light and Magic (San Rafael, California) in 1990, he has been painting and teaching professionally since 1993. When not painting he teaches at the Laguna College of Art and Design in CA and the Idyllwild School of Music and Art, also in CA. “For me the tornado represents a perfect blend of mythology and science,” says Brosio. “It is easy to imagine it alive and unpredictable, to view it as a god or agent thereof. One sees this mile-high banshee choosing certain targets and skipping others like a jittery reaper with sound and mannerisms so evocative of a living entity.” Destructive yet often elegant, tornadoes demonstrate the immense power and beauty of nature. In Brosio’s paintings, they serve as a metaphor for life’s unpredictability and humankind’s vulnerability and complacence in the face of danger. His body of work consists of dramatic compositions of man vs nature (embodied by tornadoes, giant animals misteriously appared in the uman landscape, or dinosaur skeletons from a lost world), witnessed by the strangely aloof, uncaring protagonists that inhabit his paintings. According to Brosio, these protagonists are a commentary on how people have become numb to violence, accepted it and come to simply ignore it without any action. We tend to ignore the impending danger that lurks nearby and act as if nothing is happening in order to attempt to stay relatively sane.
