# @ucberkeleyofficial on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DUJZhu7EvE3
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/64635245-ucberkeleyofficial-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/5450206c1c.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-01-30T19:38:48.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** UC Berkeley (@ucberkeleyofficial) — https://gondola.cc/ucberkeleyofficial

## Caption

“I decided right there and then to be a Chicanx artist.”

Los Angeles painter and triple Golden Bear Ramon Ramirez (BA Architecture 93 & MArch ’97; MA ’97, Design) is known for transforming palm-lined horizons, shifting light, and urban geometry into large-scale portraits of the city where he was born and raised.

Architecture brought him to Berkeley, but an art history assignment to see a major exhibition of Chicanx artists at SFMOMA illuminated a new direction.

Back on campus, Professor Emeritus of Architecture Anthony Dubovsky shaped how he saw and drew the world. “He changed my life forever,” Ramirez says. His architectural training grounds his compositions, while his art studies deepen their emotional clarity — resulting in work that feels both engineered and felt.

Calling Los Angeles his “primary muse,” his work reflects its restlessness: saturated skies, solitary palms, graffiti walls, and neighborhoods distilled into color and silhouette. Scale matters to him: “My brain tells me to start painting smaller, but that’s not authentic. That’s what’s in my heart.”

After two decades practicing and teaching architecture, he turned to painting full-time. His work has appeared at the Fowler Museum, Museum of Latin American Art, and Monterey Museum of Art. A highlight was his solo exhibition of over 40 paintings at the Carnegie Art Museum, offering a rare view of his evolution in one place.

The pandemic revealed something deeper about his purpose. When friends used his paintings as Zoom backdrops, he realized they wanted more than imagery. “It taught me art is essential to human expression,” he says. That belief guides him still, rooted in the conviction that “art is a leading element in the preservation of our democracy.”

After more than 500 paintings, Ramirez still feels the work unfolding. “Get back to me in 20 years,” he jokes. His advice for young artists? “Find your authentic voice and let it be heard.”

🔗 Read Ramirez’s full story at the link in our bio: https://bit.ly/4bnQCBL

#UCBerkeley #CalAlumStory

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ucberkeley, calalumstory

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