George Miyasaki was a painter and printmaker active in the San Francisco Bay Area arts scene during the mid-to-late twentieth century. Miyasaki gained acclaim as a brilliant colorist in the late 1950s and early 60s for his Abstract Expressionist paintings and prints. Unlike his counterparts of the New York School, Miyasaki was concerned with the spontaneity and randomness of natural creation rather than expressing his own inner psychology. He often drew inspiration from the local landscape, referring to California and the American West in his titles. ​Born in Hawaii to Japanese parents, Miyasaki grew up in a rural area surrounded by sugar plantations and lived under martial law during World War II. Encouraged by his high school art instructor, he moved to Oakland in the 1950s to study with Nathan Oliveira and Richard Diebenkorn at the California College of Arts & Crafts. He received a BFA in 1957 and an MFA in 1958 before joining the faculty through 1964. He quickly became a key figure in the Bay Area arts community, lecturing at Stanford University and collaborating with Oliveira on two lithographs for Willem de Kooning. In 1964, he became a professor of art practice at the University of California, Berkeley and taught until his retirement in 1994.