The San Francisco Bay Area has always been a rich mix of influences and cultures. The art scene has evolved out of the area's art schools, including UC Berkeley, San Francisco Art Institute and California College of the Arts. From early on, Berkeley was deeply committed to the European tradition of formal abstraction; Hans Hofmann's teaching had a lingering influence at Cal, with a curriculum heavily based on the modernist tradition, where students were urged to "push" and "pull" the picture plane within an inch of its life. While Diego Rivera had promoted politically charged work at California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), the arrival of Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko in the 1940s had accelerated a trend toward abstraction.

By the 1950s, Abstract Expressionism was clearly dominant on both sides of the Bay. Yet a number of painters, finding the weight of the tradition and its allegiances falling too heavily on them, sought a fresher, more vital form of expression in works motivated by figurative elements; this was, at the time, heresy. The movement was spearheaded by David Park with his groundbreaking "Kids on Bikes" (1950) and Rehearsal (1949-50)— legend has Park flinging all of his earlier abstract canvases into the Berkeley dump. Interest in the work began to mount. Park, Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn, along with James Weeks, Paul Wonner, Theophilus Brown and others were featured in a landmark show organized by Paul Mills at the Oakland Museum in 1957, "Contemporary Figurative Painting in the Bay Area," which served to formalize what was essentially a concurrent trend among a number of fiercely independent artists.

"Story Painters," organized by curator Carrie Lederer at the Bedford Art Gallery, recently showcased the work of three contemporary artists who carry on this independent spirit, Squeak Carnwath, Hung Liu and Inez Storer. Carnwath juxtaposes image, shape, color and text on the canvas in richly layered works, viewing the canvas as an arena for thought. Liu, raised in China, presents emotionally charged figurative work repositioning the political realist style through an expressionistic field of gestural drips. Storer's poetic compositions use paint, collage and mixed media to create thought provoking tableaux both personal and political, drawing freely from quirky found imagery, as well as her personal history — which is nuanced by her marriage to Russian émigré Andrew Romanoff, nephew of deposed Czar Nicholas.

Works of Figurative School artists such as Bischoff and Joan Brown seem to place us at a particular moment in the evolution of a life — a child stands in the kitchen, an elegant couple serve cocktails. Carnwath and Storer instead create fields where figurative pieces — a face, a silhouette — convey emotion and context, suggesting any number of connections to the cycle of their, and our, lives. The roughly hewn, at times tortured, solitary figures of Bay Area Figurative School artists Nathan Oliveira and Manuel Neri suggest an existential stance one might relate to the philosophical musings of Carnwath. Hung Liu's work shares a Socialist Realist underpinning closest to the work of Rivera, while finding freedom to explore expressionist brushwork.

While all three of the artists in "Story Painters" have chosen to make their homes in the Bay Area, none of them are native to the area. Carnwath grew up on the East Coast, moving to Oakland in the 1970s to attend California College of Arts and Crafts. Liu moved to Beijing when she was 10. She was 18 when the cultural revolution happened.

"Mao Tse-tung had a new order that all the intellectuals, including not just the professors, but the writers, the students — we were all sent away to work in the fields. I was gone for four years," Lui said.

Storer grew up in Southern California and moved to the northern part of the state to attend college in San Francisco in the '50s. However, her formative years in SoCal had a lasting effect on her. Her father was in the movie industry, and she recounted how when she was a child her father would take her to Paramount Studios. "I could watch the process of making a film. It had a profound influence on my later life as an artist, because I could see how fantasy and real life commingled," she said.

Carnwath studied at CCAC, where she met mentor Viola Frey. "I first met Viola when I came out to California to decide which school I was going to," she recalled. "I went to the Art Institute and the people were walking around with berets and dangling cigarettes and stuff and being very cool, and at CCAC I wandered into the ceramics department and Viola was in there, and she was loading up a kiln, and we ended up talking for, like, three hours." She included an homage to Fry in several works on display. "One of her favorite things was the Portland vase, the one that Wedgwood made the copy of. She loved Wedgwood, and so I thought that would be a good image to put in the paintings — as a memento mori to her."

Liu studied mural painting at the Academy of Arts in Beijing. Had students there been aware of the Abstract Expressionist movement? She replied, "Not really … a little bit … let me think. A teacher brought in a book from overseas, Gustav Klimt, and that was a big deal. That really blew our minds. So different from Socialist Realism. It was kind of hit and miss, this information."

Carnwath, somewhat surprisingly, conveyed her lack of involvement with the Bay Area Figurative School. Comparing her motivation with that of another well-known Bay Area painter, she added, "I know Chris Brown came, he was at Champaign-Urbana, or one of those, because of his interest in the Bay Area Figurative, but I just wanted to get far away." Storer, on the other hand, was very much in the thick of things. At her studio in bucolic West Marin she told of juggling roles of art student and young mother. "David Park was a young artist, probably 10 years older than I was. I was aware of him and then I was taking figure painting from — maybe it was Glenn Wessels and the model was Flo Allen — and it was a fabulous experience; she was she was total theater." Storer continued, "I ended up going to the Art Institute and my first instructor was Nathan Oliveira. We lived one door up in a flat, and I traded babysitting with a friend who had a daughter. You just sort of accommodated."

Elmer Bischoff was also there at the time, and she explained, "They were all there, and they were all in a band. The gallery of choice, and the one that everyone was connected to, was right down the street, ‘6' Gallery, and I went down there because I heard this guy was going to read his poem, and he's never read it before, so I got a babysitter and went down there and it was Ginsberg and that was the first time he'd read Howl."

Liu moved to California in 1984 to attend grad school at UCSD, spending a year in Texas before being offered her teaching position at Mills College in Oakland. "I'd seen shows and become familiar with [Bay Area Figuration,] and also through my very good friend Chris Brown. I appreciate that maybe that's pretty much why I was accepted here. Another thing is I've come to know one of very few surviving Beat generation poets, Michael McClure, and we recently collaborated on a book. I felt even though I was not here for a very vital, very exciting, historical moment in the Bay Area — the art and the action and all the political activities — I missed that, but I sensed through his work, through his poetry, I get somehow a little bit of a firsthand experience."

While some artists' movements are closely focused, even generating the occasional manifesto, many more are largely constructed by critics and art historians, somewhat after the fact. What remains clear is that trends and movements in art are the result of personal connections made among artists — neighbors, friends, lovers, colleagues — as well as through the close connection between teacher and student. Carnwath, Liu and Storer were steeped in the figurative brew of the Bay Area for several decades, and their own influences — all have distinguished teaching careers — will surely continue to percolate through the area for many years to come. "Story Painters" offered an in-depth look at the work, and a glimpse at the process, of these dynamic artists. ■