Jon Petro

I am a Contemporary artist with a European academic traditional leaning. Autodidact for the most part, I have brush my elbows with someplace that are important to the art world; schools, academics, artist, critics but that’s another story altogether. Most of time I paint, but sometimes I write as well. Always in pursuit of the most honest and pure art I can paint or see.
I wish that I could define my infatuation with paint or making paintings specify, I could easily relate it to the story you hear about a sailor falling love with the sea. All though I know no sailors and I do live in a port city, but I totally understand what it means to be infatuated with an idea. Either way it makes me look and see things differently than most people, so I run at an atypical pace. People have passed through my life but the one constant thing has been my painting.

Hunter College, MFA, New York, NY, Attended 2013-14
Clark University, BA, Worcester, Mass., 2011
Fine Arts Work Center, Summer 2001, Summer 2002, Provincetown, Mass.
Worcester Museum of Art, Studio Program, Worcester, Mass., 19842008 School of Visual Arts, New York, N.Y.
2006 Cooper Union School of Art, New York, N.Y.
2005 Contemporary Artists Center, North Adams, Mass.

2017 Becoming a Dad: Jon Petro, New Bedford Art Museum/ArtWorks!’s Heritage Gallery

2010 Abstract New England - Six Perspectives, University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, Maine

2008 A Survey in Process; JON PETRO 2004-2008*, Gail Cahalan Gallery, Providence, R.I.
Scratching the Surface, Hanover Center for the Performing Arts, Worcester, Mass.
9th Biennial New England/New Talent, Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, Mass.

2007 Parris, New York, Philadelphia, The F.U.E.L. Collection, Philadelphia, Pa.
Visual Cadence: New Work*, Sara Doyle Gallery, Brown University, Providence, R.I.
Visual Noise, UMC Art Gallery, University of Colorado, Boulder, Co.
Equivalents, San Francisco Studio School for Drawing and Painting, San Francisco, Ca.
Big Bang! Abstract Painting for the 21st Century, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Mass.
Open Painting, Providence Art Club, Providence, R.I.
LOUD, Arts + Literature Laboratory ALL, New Haven, Conn.

2006 REVERBERATION, Schiltkamp Gallery, Traina Center for the Arts, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.
Intrinsic Form, A Space Gallery, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Painting, Glass, and Video, Chazan Gallery at Wheeler, Providence, R.I.
Works on Paper, Flux Factory, Long Island Cit...