Justine Di Fiore (born 1967) is a Los Angeles-based American artist known for her gestural figurative paintings. Her brightly-colored work explores themes of the body, mortality, and caregiving that frequently reflect her years as a nursing assistant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 2014, she was awarded an Artist Initiative Grant in Visual Art from the Minnesota State Arts Board.
Early life and education Di Fiore was born in Monterey, California and raised in the Bronx, NY. She earned her BA from Oberlin College and her MFA from the University of California, Davis.
Work With titles such as Nurse (2026) and Caring Is a Longing (2026), Di Fiore's paintings are based in nearly three decades of work in clinical settings as a nursing assistant. This professional caregiving grounds her engagement with the body, sometimes through an art historical lens as evident in the diptych Undergrowth (2024), which is a tribute to Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà (1552–64). At the same time, this work attests to a more personal influence in caring for her late mother. According to art critic Zakiah Goff, "Di Fiore’s figures are often faceless, their identities slightly blurred or obscured. Without a fixed expression to guide interpretation, the focus moves to gesture, to touch, to the relationship between bodies."
Select Solo Exhibitions 2026 Urgent Care, Dreamsong, Minneapolis, MN 2025 Pietà, The Bunker LA, Los Angeles, CA 2018 Magic Carpet, Pirsig Projects, Minneapolis, MN Sources:
References
External links Justine Di Fiore at Dreamsong, Minneapolis, MN