Los Angeles-based painter John Sonsini is best known for his poignant and masterful portraits of Latino day laborers. Painting from extended sitting sessions, as opposed to working with photographs, Sonsini uses his oils to capture immediate physicality, expressions of gender, and the psychic charge between artist and subject. Sonsini has denied that working with a marginalized population was a political statement, instead explaining that, "The notion of painting dayworkers grew entirely out of my need to have sitters who were available to work daily in the studio.” Represented by Vielmetter Gallery, Sonsini has works in public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
