Roland Petersen is a Bay Area painter whose masterful syntheses of gestural abstract expressionism, painterly realism, and advanced color theory have made his paintings coveted nationwide. Petersen’s work has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art both in New York City, the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Having just celebrated his 97th birthday, he continues to paint every day.

Petersen uses saturated colors, thick layered pigment, and strong geometric composition to integrate still life, figures, and landscape into compositions that are beautiful with an aura of timelessness for the figures present. Petersen’s sophisticated color palette is informed by the color theory of Hans Hofmann, with whom he studied as a young man in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

“What I am trying to do in my compositions: create an almost nostalgic loneliness. The figures are being separated by space, but they can still relate to one another.”