"In 1953, I received a scholarship to the California School of Fine Arts and gravitated to the possibilities of abstract expressionism. During the following years I explored oil painting and was able to exhibit my "Compositions: Jazzus Series", and "Black and Blue Series" in local galleries. By 1960, I was investigating the potential shaped format. In 1961, moved to New York and soon began to use acrylic polymer on shaped canvas with a focus on the spatial aspects of color. I also became associated with the Park Place group and gallery at that time. In 1968, I returned to San Francisco and began to teach. I painted my "East/West Series" which were shown at the San Francisco Museum of Art and the San Francisco Art Institute. It was during this period when I made several paintings using clear acrylic polymer medium over the raw canvas as color. By 1972, I began to expand the shaped format into large-scale multiple panel color fields and the M.H. De Young Memorial museum gave me an exhibition in 1974. Soon after teaching at Lone Mountain College and the University of California, Berkeley, I received a National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowship Grant (9/1/79 - 8/31/80). I also began to concentrate upon the single shaped panel again. I was awarded a California Arts Council artist in Residence grant to work in San Francisco's South of Market community (8/82 -9/85) and received a second NEA Artist fellowship grant (10/1/85 - 9/30/86). In recent years, I exhibited at the Transamerica Pyramid and taught at the Academy of Art College and the San Francisco Art Institute." (autobiography written by Leo Valledor) References:
Image: "Hot 16" |