David Park was a painter often defying conventional held beliefs in art circles.

One, he was a teacher in high school and later at various art schools not the usual path for many great artists.

Two, suddenly he cast aside his Cubist style in favour of a totally different style and approach, creating one of the most important new art movements.

Park started painting in his teens when he was 17 years old. Five years later in 1933 he had his first solo show at the Oakland Art Gallery in California.

The show featured Cubist-inspired art and was hailed as that of a young talented painter.

By 1943 he was an art teacher at a San Francisco art school.

In 1949 Park shocked the art world – his Cubist period was over. He switched style – painting the human body in bold, vivid colours. That approach – along with other painters from the San Francisco area – was called the Bay Area Figurative Movement, one of the most important art movements in American art.

I first saw some of his Cubist paintings while on a holiday in San Francisco. I loved what I saw and bought two of them, not knowing anything about him.

But in order to pay for them required a bank loan of $5,000. And that first purchase was the beginning of my long-life journey as an art collector.

Today, his paintings are held in the collections of such renowned museums as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others and collectors all over the world.