Richard L. Nelson (1901–1972) was a painter, educator and the founder of the University of California, Davis, art program, where he created a lasting culture of artistic exploration and faculty/student collaboration. In his artistic practice he embraced Abstract Expressionism by creating ambiguous spaces that flattened the picture plane using dense, muted color and forms. Prior to coming to Davis, Nelson served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during World War II and remained in Europe to study painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He later studied at Mills College and UC Berkeley, and taught at Washington State College before coming to UC Davis in 1952. As founding chair of the Department of Art, he made the consequential decision to hire practicing artists with distinctive, independent approaches rather than build a conventional academic program. Among the artists he recruited were Wayne Thiebaud, Robert Arneson, William T. Wiley, Roy De Forest, Manuel Neri and Roland Petersen. Nelson encouraged faculty to concentrate on making art and teaching, creating an unusually collegial environment in which students were treated as fellow artists. A painter himself, Nelson worked across representational and abstract approaches, but his enduring influence lies in the artistic community he created. His faculty helped make UC Davis an internationally recognized center of experimentation and profoundly influenced the development of postwar Northern California art.