Ronnie Landfield (born 1947) studied at the Art Students League before enrolling at age 16 in the Kansas City Art Institute. After two months, he returned to New York determined to “just paint.” He settled permanently in Manhattan following another academic interlude at UC-Berkeley (summer 1964) and the San Francisco Art Institute (1964-65). Landfield’s early career was phenomenal by any standard. He participated in his first Whitney Biennial in 1967, at age 20, and was included again in 1969 and 1973. In 1969 he was awarded the William and Noma Copley (Cassandra) Foundation Grant in painting. More recent honors include the Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant for painting in both 1995 and 2001. Landfield’s paintings can be found in such important collections as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art; Walker Art Center; Art Institute of Chicago; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among many others. Landfield says of his work: “If my paintings seem to be optimistic and spiritual and to express the inner core of the human soul it is to that intention that they are meant. I would become unnecessary as an artist if I ever forgot the power and the fragility and the beauty of the human spirit.”