SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Jenkins Johnson Gallery announced the passing of Violet Fields earlier this week (1940–2025), a seminal figure in the Bay Area art world whose influence resonates across generations.

Fields emerged in the late 1960s amid the ferment of the Bay Area art boom, aligning with the radical experimentation of Funk Art and the Bay Area Figurative Movement while charting her own path that fused abstraction, figuration, and cultural critique. Her work contributed to the pluralistic energy that defined the region, where artists were breaking down boundaries between high and low culture, politics and aesthetics. Field’s practice bridged abstraction and representation, always foregrounding questions of identity, resilience, and cultural belonging.

As a longtime faculty member at the San Francisco Art Institute, Fields shaped the trajectory of countless artists who would go on to define contemporary practice. Alongside other notable artists of color including dear friend and mentor Mary Lovelace O’Neal, and Oliver Lee Jackson, Fields was pivotal in expanding the institute’s vision during the 1970’s and 1980’s, foregrounding questions of race, gender, and representation within the predominantly white avant-garde landscape. Her pedagogical reach extended to generations of students, including artists such as Enrique Chagoya, Hung Liu, Lava Thomas, and Sadie Barnette, who cite her as a formative influence.

Institutionally, Fields’s work entered major museum collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum of California, and the de Young, situating her firmly within the canon of postwar West Coast art. Her paintings and works on paper continue to be exhibited nationally, with recent retrospectives underscoring her historical importance in shaping dialogues around identity and abstraction.

Beyond the studio and classroom, Fields was a community builder who believed the Bay Area’s strength lay in its multiplicity. She tirelessly advocated for underrepresented voices, and through teaching, mentorship, and collaboration, left an indelible mark on both the local and national arts ecosystem. Her work can currently be seen in People Make This Place: SFAI Stories at SFMOMA, and in recent years was featured in two landmark group exhibitions at Jenkins Johnson Gallery: The Avant Garde: Those Ahead of Their Time and Right is Right.

Violet Fields leaves behind a legacy that can be seen, studied, and felt—in the canvases themselves, and in the threads of community, teaching, and artistic lineage she wove so strongly. She will be remembered as a vital architect of the Bay Area’s artistic landscape—an artist, teacher, and cultural worker whose vision continues to shape the present.