Raimonds Staprans paints simple everyday objects.

His boats, chairs, barns, fruit, cans, become unique and alive through his use of brilliant colours, set against a flat, linear surface.

“The color on the painting should be greater than what comes out of the tube and you achieve that by manipulating colours around it…I like playing around with the colour volumes. The colour changes in relation to what’s around it and I think that’s the basis of painting. For me, it’s the joy and mystery of painting.”

Born in Latvia, Staprans lives in San Francisco.

He immigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1947, fleeing the Soviet invasion of his native country.

He studied art at the University of Washington (under the renowned painter, Mark Tobey) and the University of California, Berkeley, with another major painter, Hans Hofmann.

Staprans also is a internationally recognized playwright.

He had his first show at the Maxwell Galleries in San Francisco, owned and operated by a Canadian, Mark Hoffman.

Staprans art is held in various museums in the United States and he has had gallery showings in in Germany, Latvia and the U.S.

This slideshow shows you some of his works.

We bought this Staprans on our first trip to San Francisco.