Jerrold Ballaine, painter, sculptor, and educator, was born in Seattle, Washington on 16 February 1934. He attended the University of Washington at Seattle between 1952 and 1955 and, after serving in the military, he furthered his studies at the Art Center School in Los Angeles from 1958 to 1959. He earned his B.F.A. degree from the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco in 1959, where he studied under Richard Diebenkorn, and his M.F.A. degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1961.

Ballaine's early interest in Abstract Expressionism in the Bay Area placed him in in the burgeoning Funk Art and Bay Area Figurative movements, the latter of which included Diebenkorn, Glenn Wessels, Wayne Thiebaud, Nathan Oliveira, and others who made their mark in the late 1950s and '60s. After his graduation from the San Francisco Art Institute he also included landscapes in his oil painting, for which he would become known throughout the Bay Area. However, by the 1990s he had moved away from landscapes and into non-objective Abstraction. In the late 1970s he worked for a time in color lithography, where his work leaned toward Op Art. Since the 1970s he has painted in acrylic and also worked in sculpture, using clay, fabricated plastic, and marble.

Ballaine began his teaching career in 1963 when he joined the faculty of the Cornish School of Allied Arts in Seattle. In 1965, he was hired to teach at the University of California, Berkeley, retiring in 1994 as Professor Emeritus. While at Berkeley, he served as Interim Museum Director for the academic year 1975-1976. He is currently a resident of Sonoma County where he continues to paint and sculpt.

His numerous awards and honors include the San Francisco Museum of Drawing and Print Art, Annual Award, 1960; Fourth International Young Artists Exhibition Award Tokyo, Japan, 1967; Summer Faculty Fellowship, University of California at Berkeley, 1969; Creative Arts Institute Grant, University of California, Berkeley, 1971; and the Humanities Research Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley, 1980.

Jerrold Ballaine is represented in the collections of the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth; University Art Museum, University of California Berkeley, California; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Hirshhorn Collection, New York; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; Logan Museum of Art, Logan, Utah; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California; Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol, California; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Wichita Art Museum, Kansas; and the Swiss State Museum, Zurich, Switzerland.

Selected solo exhibitions:
1960: Zabriskie Gallery, NY
1961: Gump's Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1963: Robery Schoelkopf Gallery, NY
1964, '65: Scott Gallery, Seattle, WA
1966: Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA
1967: Mills College Art Gallery, Oakland, CA; Sonoma State College, Rohnert Park, CA
1969: Galeria Carl Van der Voort, San Francisco, CA
1970: San Francisco Museum of Art; Gallery Reese-Palley, SF, CA; Richard White Gallery, SF, CA
1971: Gallery Reese-Palley
1974: John Bolles Gallery, SF
1975: Sonoma State College
1977: Stephen Wirta Gallery, SF
1981: San Jose Museum of Art, SJ, CA
1984: Worth Ryder Gallery, U of CA, Berkeley
1986: Joseph Chowning Gallery, SF
1988: Charles Campbell Gallery, SF: Erickson and Elms Gallery, SF
1989: Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
1990: Malton Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
1991: "The Figure, 1961 - 1991", Ebert Gallery, SF; Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek Museum, Walnut Creek, CA
1992: "Sonoma County Landscapes", Ebert Gallery; "Water Form", Collector Gallery, Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA
1993: "San Francisco Culture, Places and Things, Series 1" and "Series 2", Ebert Gallery
1995: Kuwait Museum, Al-Adwane Gallery, guest of Kuwait G'ment, etc.
1990: Trosa, Sweden; Gallery "C" International, Paris (through 2000)
1999: Athens Gallery, Athens, Greece
2004: Quicksilver Mine Co., Forestville, CA
2006: 1212 Gallery, Burlingame, CA
2008: Withywindle Gallery, Guerneville, CA
2010: JC Leissering, Santa Rosa, CA
2014: Christie Marks Gallery, Healdsburg, CA

A complete resume for Jerrold Ballaine can be found on his website.