Bay Area painter Ira Yeager was born and raised in Bellingham, Washington, and began his career as an artist after he completed high school. In 1957, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he studied under Richard Diebenkorn at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Attracted by Bay Area abstract figurative painting, he moved to the San Francisco Art Institute and studied with Elmer Bischoff and Nathan Oliveira. There he also worked with fellow students and close friends Joan Brown and Manuel Neri.

Throughout the 60’s and early 70’s Ira lived and worked in various places including Florence, Morocco, Santa Fe, Mexico and Guatemala. During this time he returned periodically to San Francisco to exhibit his work. In 1973, he made a pivotal move to Greece, where he established a studio on the island of Corfu. For the next 10 years he lived in Greece while making painting trips to England, France and Italy.

In 1982, Ira left Greece and returned permanently to Northern California. Throughout the 80’s he painted exclusively from his studio in San Francisco, but after the 1989 earthquake, he moved his studios to the Napa Valley while continuing regular painting trips to France, Italy and Mexico.

During the 90’s Ira continued painting and produced numerous new series projects including the Neo Veneto Series, Return Toward Abstraction and the figurative 18th Century Peasant Wine Vendors, as well as studies on classic works by Vermeer, Velasquez and Goya. The decade culminated in a retrospective exhibition at the Napa Valley Museum in 1999 that encompassed 40 years of his prolific career. In 2008, an exhibition titled, Process and Progression was held at Copia in the town of Napa, California

Currently Mr. Yeager work between his studios in the Napa Valley and the Sonoma County coast.