Ernest Briggs, a second generation Abstract Expressionist painter known for his strong, lyrical, expressive brushstrokes, use of color and sometimes geometric composition, was born in San Diego, CA in 1923. He spent his childhood and youth in California, and then served in the Army during WWII. He studied painting at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco under the faculty assembled by Douglas MacAgy. They included Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt and Clyfford Still, who had a strong influence on Briggs. He first started painting in a figurative symbolic style, not really knowing where he was headed. Park, one of his first instructors, said, “We don’t have a model; we don’t have still life; we just paint.” It was a revelation to Briggs, as he had thought there had to be a “subject”, as in the Ashcan or Regionalist style. The fact that one
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