Jonathan Sobol has been creating art since he was a child: when he was eight he began painting with oil paints and within a few years (when he was fifteen) he picked up sculpting. These activities seemed natural to him, as he was raised with art and music around him: “I thought that’s how the work world,” he explains. Born and raised in the Southwest of the United States, Sobol traveled abroad extensively, eventually studying art at the Betzalel Art Academy of Jerusalem and, later, privately in New York City.

At 26, Sobol committed himself to painting portraits because, as he says, “if one can paint a portrait, one can paint anything.” He has since painted thousands of committed portraits, but he left the field of portraiture because he found it confining. Instead, Sobol uses painting as a method of discovery, and while he still works with the human form, most of his work is figurative and, hopefully, more communicative.