GRACE MUNAKATA

unakata's introduction to painting occurred at the kitchen table, where a small group of men, including her father, practiced Japanese brush painting. She studied studio art at the University of California Davis, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, receiving her B.A. degree in 1980. She continued MFA studies at UC Davis in1983, working closely with Cornelia Schulz, Wayne Thiebaud, Manuel Neri, Robert Arneson and Ralph Johnson. As a graduate student she received the Regents Scholarship, the Andy Warhol Scholarship, a Humanities Research Grant, Graduate Teaching Award, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture on scholarship in1984. She has work in private and corporate collections, including the Bank of America, Hyatt Regency, Thom Weisel, Manuel Neri, Nancy and Paul Pelosi, the Richard Nelson Fine Arts Collection at UCD and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. She is currently a Professor of Painting and Drawing at California State University East Bay represented by the Paul Thiebaud Gallery in San Francisco and b. Sakata Garo Gallery.

My paintings and collage contain varying degrees of abstraction, pattern and imagery. Literature, visual art, my tangled garden, memory and the wash of events are sources. A bird might be referenced by a graph of its song or a recognizable image; a flat shape may assume a cartoon-like presence or resemble a leaf. The perspectives of childhood and growing into an adult are continually present. What's nearby and very distant can coexist, just as stars in a constellation appear close together but can be far removed in actual time and distance.