I just learned that Ray Yoshida, one of the Chicago Imagists and one of my painting teachers at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, passed away this week.

I studied with him in an advanced painting studio for one semester: he once told me my work was “too sentimental.” (Thank goodness!).

I’m sad and very nearly speechless. So, let me just quote from the NYT article:

“He was very important to a lot of people there,” said Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art and a student of Mr. Yoshida in the mid-1970s in that school’s master of fine arts program. “As a teacher he was mysterious and witty. The mystery would draw you in, and then he would say something funny but with an edge that would make you think — kind of like his paintings.”

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