At age 17, before finishing his last year of high school, he left home due to irreconcilable differences between him and his new family.  Several living situations later, and of legal age, he finished high school at night, and attempted college twice, but only for a very short period. 

Although visual art had always been a part of his life, it was music that he took up professionally.  He made a living singing and playing guitar in Florida nightclubs from 1976 to 1979 until he moved to San Francisco.  It was there that he sold his first two paintings to the San Francisco Inn on Lombard Street, where he worked at the time. 

After returning to Florida and living in Key West for nine months, he moved to Seattle in May of 1982.  With music now on the back burner, interest in painting and drawing became the main focus in his life.  Making art a career, however, was not his intent; it just happened. 

Since his inclusion in a group show of Latin-American artists in 1986 at Seattle Center, what started out as a strong interest, became a lifetime commitment.  This commitment is not exclusive to his own career, however.  It is important for him to promote other artists as well.  He has curated four exhibits for the Bumbershoot Festival, served on numerous art jury panels, and has been an advocate for the inclusion of minority artists in Washington State. 

Alonso’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S., Canada, and Latin America.  He has been awarded the Morrie and Joan Alhadeff PONCHO Artist of the Year Award, Special Projects grants by 4 Culture and City of Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, a Gap Grant by Artist Trust, a Sustaining Purchase Award by the Seattle Arts Commission, and the Behnke Foundation’s Neddy Artist Fellowship. 

His work is in public collections such as Seattle City Light Portable Works, State of Oregon, Washington State’s Art in Public Places Program, City of Everett, IMG Inc. in Tokyo, Microsoft, Safeco, AIDS Housing of Washington, Museum of Northwest Art and the Tacoma Art Museum.  He completed commissions for the Seahawks Stadium, Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and the King County Housing Authority’s Greenbridge Neighborhood Park, and continues to work on a project for the Sound Transit Edmunds Station.

Contact Alison@SedersGallery.com for a current biography of shows

Juan Alonso’s newest paintings, all of which have been worked in shades of grey, may at first confound those who think of Alonso as a painter of dazzlingly colorful hothouse horticulture. Memories, real and imagined, of the tropical vegetation of his native Cuba have inspired Alonso’s paintings in the past. His botanical beauties have always been seductive but sinister – Venus flytraps whose alluring looks mask something less lovely inside. For an artist who became a political exile at age 10, the place where nostalgia and yearning meet political reality can be as jarring as a beautiful but poisonous plant.

Robin Updike

Grey Matters

It seems to be human nature to accept things as what we are told they are. There is not much difference in the way we accept new words or phrases for new ideas and concepts. We tend to believe what we read in newspapers and see on the news without questioning or digging any further to make sure it is indeed true, until something affects us so deeply that it makes us read between the lines. It is much more interesting to allow each viewer to come away with their own interpretation of this body of work. I can say that the idea for this series came from very different sources. From politics to current and past world events, I have found that things at opposite ends of a spectrum can be surprisingly and sometimes frighteningly similar.

I chose a monochromatic scheme to further de-specify the images in this series, hoping that the viewer explores further what is not obviously there. Nothing is completely black & white. The grey also matters. The full story is much more important than the sound bite, and that requires thinking.

Juan Alonso
2007