We, The Workers. The Immigrants. The Invisible.
Whether you’ve lived in a city for a few days or a decade, there is a common switch we flip—an almost organic autopilot mode. In the morning, we hear the buzz, like a bee’s hum, but here the bees dress according to the season and are always running late onto something. You see them moving in sync with their pods on and eyes fixed on their screens. One by one, in single and multiple lines, they tap through their commute turnstiles. The repetition and pace make the movement feel like a choreography of small collisions, or a musical beat, all softened by the most powerful commodity, routine. And in the middle of all this commotion, something or someone is always overlooked.
Some figures become just another part of the backdrop. They are the brick, the beam, the scaffold. They hold the city up, but we rarely look long enough to see them. Like stars in a city sky, they’re there, just obscured by the lights—or in the case of New York City, by the Empire State Building.
But not in Jonathan Yubi’s paintings. These invisible figures return to center stage. His work tells the stories of the people we often pass by, placing them in scenes rich with symbolism and historical resonance. There is no spectacle in Yubi’s work, only presence. His characters stand still, even as the world rushes around them. And by the time you notice, you’re already inside one of his tales.
No Fuss No Muss, 2023
Oil on canvas
44 × 29 × 1 in
Our visit to Jonathan’s studio is part of a larger series from Eyes on Art titled “After the Storm.” Inspired by one of our shows, The Storms Inside, this initiative aims to shed light on artists' journeys, their studios, and their creative processes.
Traveling to New Jersey, we understood the moment we stepped into Jonathan Yubi’s studio that we were entering a kind of multifaceted pilgrimage. Yubi is not a nomad, but his path has moved steadily along the East Coast through much of his young adulthood. We first connected with Yubi during our group exhibition At Summer’s End, where he showed two paintings that were part of a series called Work i(s/n) Progress. In those pieces, he placed everyday workers at the center of big-story-like scenes. He paints them not just doing their jobs, but standing like heroes, holding tools that look like something out of a history book. It’s his way of saying their work matters and so do their stories.
Daniel G. Rodriguez: Could you describe a normal studio day, and how do you go about finding the subjects in your painting?
Jonathan Yubi: I usually come in here after I put the boy down. I work on a few canvases at a time. If I get frustrated with one or can't figure out the direction of it I put it aside and start working on the other one. I spend maybe once a week, once every other week building the frames, but the majority of the time is painting.
I try not to do too much sketching. Most of the sketching is drawn directly on the canvas when I start working because part of my process is to continuously evolve the canvas. And so any sort of preliminary sketch, the final piece looks nothing like it. I try not to spend too much time on the conception of it. I like to look at the paintings as a story. And so when you're writing a story the starting point for me is the characters… Who is the main character? and what's their overall arc? And then from there you build in the subplots and additional characters and maybe even change the ending once or twice.
DGR: How do you decide when it’s time to set a painting aside? What usually brings you back to something you’ve left unfinished?
JY: When the frustration outweighs the delight, that's when I put that painting aside and move on to another one.
I've had paintings where I picked up the paintbrush, started working on that painting and in a week I'm finished with it and haven't touched anything else the entire time. I've really honed in on that painting. There are other times where I've been working on a piece for a few years and it's just never complete. A piece might languish indefinitely, unfinished.
Atomized History of Rebellion and Whiskey, 2024
Oil on canvas
60 × 44 × 2 1/2 in
DGR: We’ve seen you working with wood and building frames. Has woodworking had any influence on your approach to painting?
JY: The woodworking just began as a hobby. I like building things, but it's very different from the paintings. The paintings are a treat. There's no science behind it. It's an art. Whereas with constructing the stretcher bars or anything else that I'm creating with wood, you have to be very precise. So working with wood in tandem with painting is switching your brain from using a T-square and getting it right to the 16th or the 32 of an inch versus a brushstroke, it can just go anywhere. And since it's oil, it can be moved, it can be brought up, it can be pushed down. There’s a weird relationship between the two.
DGR: Your paintings often feature construction workers, many of whom are immigrants, placed within historical or symbolic scenes. What drew you to center these figures in your work?
JY: I love reading history. I love immersing myself in it. A lot of the work, as you said, it's these old historical narratives, either biblical parables-narratives. A lot of them recently are American Revolutionary era stories. This started when I was at Lehman College and I was taking an Intro to Photography class. One of the assignments was to do candid shots of people. I was walking around it was construction sites on every block. And I started realizing that they're always there. It's the... “I live near a train station,” the first time you hear the train pass by. It's pretty loud, and then the second week, third week, fourth week go by, and now a train passes by and you don't hear it. It's fuzz in the background. I think that's what construction workers are to many of us, they're always there. They're always there on the street, on the highway, on a bridge, and they just become part of the landscape, it's really easy to have them as background noise.
Una historia gringa, 2020
A biographical work. This chaotic scene depicts the 86th Street station in the Upper West Side. A few workers are seen dispatching a Klansman (fig. A); one unmasks him (fig. B), while others (fig. C) run him through with their medieval weaponry.
Many of the figures in the composition wield medieval weapons (fig. D) instead of modern-day construction tools. This substitution is intentional—it shifts the way we read these characters. A jackhammer becomes a halberd, a shovel becomes a pike—not to romanticize violence, but to evoke historical reference. Most armies throughout history were composed of poor laborers who fought not with gold-pommeled swords, but with repurposed farm tools. That overlap between labor and resistance runs deep.
Una historia gringa, 2020
Oil on canvas
60 × 44 × 2 in
DGR: What do you hope people take away from your artwork?
JY: With my paintings. I present a scene like a clip of a story, and my hope is for people to see that story and build this narrative around it. I love doing that with my work. And every time my son sees my work, he goes, "Oh, wow!" He just sits there and stares at it. I really like that reaction.
I try to pepper some symbols into the painting, and each symbol has its own story. Seen together they all build one large story. For example, the “Life Liberty” (No Fuss No Muss), that one was based on the biblical narrative of Abraham sacrificing his son. There's the American presidential seal because I tried connecting that story with Hunter Biden and the criminal case that was going on around him. I thought to myself, "I wonder what President Biden's thinking right now." What will he do? Will he try to intervene and to the detriment of his political future or will he let it play out? That was playing in my head, and as I was painting, I was trying to pepper these symbols in there so people would look at it and build a narrative.
DGR: Life can be overwhelming between work, family, and the constant flood of news and distractions. What helps you recharge creatively or stay grounded in your practice?
JY: I work in the city, so to recharge I wander around. I’ll go to Washington Square Park and just walk around. People watch. That’ll either recharge your batteries or freak you out a little bit because people are nuts.
And the other recharge is gardening. My house has a big garden and I know nothing about it. I'm learning as I go, and it's relaxing to sit there and pull something like, "Oops, maybe that wasn't a weed. Shouldn't have pulled it." That's a good way to decompress. A low stakes way of working out your anxiety.
DGR: If you had to choose just one word to describe the impact you want your work to have, what would it be?
JY: One word? Can it be a hyphenated word? I don't know why I asked that, because I don’t have a hyphenated word in mind either.
I want people to see a story. I've always had an overactive imagination. Growing up, I would watch a movie, and then reenact it. I’d watch Tarzan, then dress up like Tarzan.. I’d run around as Tarzan, trying to live that experience.
As we finished our visit, Yubi walked us through his garden. With paint still on his hands and clippers in the other, he trimmed a few plants—branches, flowers, and a thick patch of mint, which he gave us to take home. He mentioned how mint grows fast and can take over a garden if left alone. It felt like more than just a small fact. It was a moment that, like his paintings, showed how much care he gives to things that often go unnoticed.
Today, more people are looking for art that speaks about who we are, where we come from, and the work we do to survive and build something better. Yubi’s paintings speak quietly, but clearly. They remind us that visibility is not a trend. It is a right. And in his art, the people behind the scenes become a story worth telling.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity, while preserving the original meaning and intent of the interviewee's statements. Please note that the editing is tailored for online presentation, enhancing readability and engagement.
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