I entered San Jose State University MFA Graduate School in 1981 and studied with a committee of three professors, who painted in the abstract expressionist manner. This resulted in a great advantage for me. Until now I was mainly concerned with images. After exposure to my committee’s nonrepresentational work, it really honed my thinking to use of the art elements without the trap of the image. I decide to venture into abstract painting, but still using mostly parallel lines. For the next 15 years I painted linear abstractions, and had several shows in that genre. However I was beginning to feel that, the abstraction was too ambiguous and I wanted to tell stories in my paintings. I wanted to be specific. And then in the year ’95/’96 I came across a picture of Van Gough’s Sunflower paintings. They are small in size, but they make such an impressive group of paintings. Van Gough painted 13 of those to welcome Gougin to his home in Earls, in southern France. I also wanted to make a group of small paintings in Linearism for Karen.

In Feb of ’96 the new San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened. I went to the opening party with my family. Even though, the line to get into the museum wrapped around the block, it was a great affair. They had clowns and ice cream for the people in the line and once you got in, there were toys for the kids, several music groups and plenty of food and of course plenty of great art. It was a very festive opening. The new building, designed by Swiss architect Mr. Mario Botta is very impressive also. After this wonderful experience I decided to use the new museum as the subject for one of my small paintings.

I wanted to make a group of paintings like Van Gough’s sunflower group. This was the first painting, of many to come, going back to representation after 15 years of mostly non-representative work. Most of my recent linear paintings are representational. I still venture into abstraction when I want to express universal and ambiguous experiences and feelings, for the viewer to read and decipher. This museum is one of my favorite places to visit in San Francisco.