GREGORY COLLINS BOSQUE

     I was born and raised in San Francisco, gateway to a land where the waters, dunes, hills and mountains won’t let the air find rest. As a child in such a place I came to expect that my world could change in color and form from minute to minute, and that I would find a surprise around the corner or at the crest of the next hill. There I might see a place I’d known all my life in a brand new light.

     I try to keep this spirit of expectancy alive everywhere I go. I want my art to reflect this spirit.

A Brief Autobiography

My mother tried to explain my early love of drawing by recalling how her Grandpa Apolonio, a saddle maker, would also draw and paint. “That’s where he gets it from.”

I received my first formal instruction in art at City College of San Francisco and later earned an art degree at San Francisco State College. I followed with a year at the  University of Madrid, and then earned a teaching credential because I wanted to teach art to young people. 

My plan to teach art was interrupted by fourteen years that included a summer at Middlebury College, a year teaching Spanish in New Jersey, studying and apprenticing in stage design in Manhattan, working as an assistant art director at  J. Walter Thompson in Manhattan, and then as a graphic artist in the Media Services Department of Bank of America in San Francisco.

I became an art teacher and a bilingual teacher in San Francisco public schools in 1984. Teaching art, or anything, to teens was a thrilling, maddening and humbling revelation. 

My travels, too, offered revelations. I am grateful to have been a traveler and guest in China, the Mediterranean, the Andes, Argentina, Mexico and New York. The indelible influence of these places continues to inspire me.

In 2007, oil painter Lin Wei opened Asian Arts School in San Francisco. The school offered art instruction after school and all day during the summer for children and youth. Since we are life partners, she invited me to participate in the building of the program that continues to this day online and in person.

The work that we have done online for Asian Arts School has lead me to develop an online presence for myself and share some of my work.

As I present my work online I see that my work in oils best presents the visions that I want to offer.