Ronald Julius Christensen produced landscape and still life paintings that were deeply influenced by color and nature—specifically the New England seaside, the clam marshes in Hough’s Neck near Boston, and the flowers grown by his father to earn money during the Great Depression. Throughout his art career, Christensen’s style closely resembled American Impressionism and later evolved towards abstract colorful lines and shapes by the 1960s. “I love being a painter. I love reflective atmospheres throwing light and shadows back and forth, constantly changing as the sun sets. A brilliant intensity and fleeting peacefulness as the watercolors melt together, and I can take it all with me,” he said.
During a series of childhood illnesses, Christensen was given a black ink pen from his grandfather and began drawing. After graduating high school in 1942, he joined the U.S. Army Marine Corps as a cartographer with the Intelligence Division. He later studied at the Massachusetts School of Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Christensen taught silkscreening at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, as well as color theory and life drawing at the New England School of Art and Design, Boston.
