As part of the larger Works Progress Administration, The FAP funded a wide range of visual and plastic arts; the easel division was specifically assigned to paintings.
Along with Lonergan, notable artists such as Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, and Isami Noguchi signed its founding document.
Of the thousands of posters submitted, Lonergan's was one of two hundred chosen for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art from November 1942 to January 1943.
He also received awards from the American Arts Congress (1939), the Roerich Museum (1934), the Philadelphia Graphics Society (1940) and the International Workers Order (1940)[7] Lonergan's paintings were judged warmly by critics.
Parnassus published by the College Art Association reviewed an exhibit and wrote: "John Lonergan is represented by a number of lovely canvases, beautifully drawn and colored.
He is a versatile painter who can use heavy colors and pastel shades with equal effectiveness, and is capable of producing vigorous movement and life at one time and the enormous calm and sweetness of death at another.
"[8] In In December 1935 American Magazine of Art reviewed an exhibit of his work and wrote: "John Lonergan is a young painter who stands completely on his own feet.
There is a stark, forbidding grandeur about those silent crane-hoists seen against the bulk of a quarry mountain, stretching their thin, steel fingers into an ominous sky.