John Newsom (b. 1970) is best known for combining multiple techniques of formal painting strategies onto large-scale canvases featuring dynamic spectacles of the natural world. In 1992 he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at The Rhode Island School of Design and subsequently moved to New York City, where he attended New York University’s studio arts program. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from NYU at the age of 24. Newsom has been based in New York for his entire career, participating in more than 100 national and international exhibitions since the mid-1990s. Newsom’s work has been the focus of a number of solo exhibitions presented at notable institutions, including The Richard J. Massey Foundation for the Arts and Sciences, New York, NY (2011-2012); MANA Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ (2015); The Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City, OK (2022); The Mary R. Koch Arts Center, Wichita, KS (2023); The Brattleboro Museum, Brattleboro, VT (2024); Kunstverein Heppenheim, Heppenheim, Germany (2024) and The Kebbel Villa Museum (with Raymond Pettibon), Schwandorf, Germany (2025). 

Published in a 2015 monograph of Newsom’s paintings, art critic Barry Schwabsky writes in his essay, “Beneath his thick and sensuous painted renderings of flora and fauna is a grappling with the giants of abstraction. What keeps ‘strong painting’ from becoming merely muscle bound - is Newsom’s secret weapon: the discipline that comes from considering himself, not a painter of images, but rather an abstractionist ... to appreciate his paintings is ... to engage with their surfaces of purely sensual incident.”

Articles and reviews of Newsom’s work have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, and The New York Times, among other notable periodicals. His work is included in numerous private and public collections including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Hammer Museum, The San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), The Yale University Art Gallery and The R.I.S.D. Museum.