Ray Yoshida was born in Hawaii in 1930 and, after finishing his studies in Hawaii, enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and subsequently Syracuse University, New York in 1958. The following year Yoshida returned to SAIC where he taught (and exerted a profound influence upon) Jim Nutt, Christina Ramberg, Roger Brown, and Robert Storr among many others. In 1998, a major retrospective of the artists work was shown at The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, which then traveled to The Chicago Cultural Center and the Madison Art Center. After the artist's death in 2009, the retrospective, Touch and Go: Ray Yoshida and His Spheres of Influence was exhibited at the SAIC's Sullivan Galleries. His works are included in the permanent collections of The Art Institute Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, Chicago.