Roland Petersen (1926–) is a Bay Area painter whose paintings
from the 1950s and ’60s are masterful syntheses of gestural
abstract expressionism, painterly realism, and advanced color
theory. His work integrates still life, figures, and landscape
into complex, architectonic compositions that are beautiful and
enigmatic, but still retain a strong sense of place, in this case
the fields and farms of California’s Central Valley.