NORTHRIDGE -- A former California State University, Northridge, student's painting has come home.

"California Baroque," a 36-by-48-inch abstract painting that now hangs at CSUN, was created in the 1960s by the late artist Robert Curtis Wilson while he was a student there.

Recently, his wife, Marilyn Wilson, was going through her husband's papers when she found a Jan. 14, 1960, article about him in the campus newspaper, The Sundial.

In the photograph that goes with the article, Wilson is seated in front of "California Baroque" and talked of his hopes that one of his paintings would someday hang in the university library.

So she donated the painting to CSUN.

"I just feel like it's home," said Wilson, 54, Grand Island, N.Y., who traveled to CSUN recently to see the painting in its new location, in the lobby of the administrative offices, on the third floor of CSUN's Oviatt Library.

"I just felt that it had to be here, and I couldn't feel good until it was."

CSUN President Jolene Koester thanked Wilson and admired the painting.

"He's one of ours," Koester said proudly. "We have so many faculty like him who bring distinction to the university."

The painting, done in muted golds, greens and browns and mixed with burlap, gold foil paper, rice paper and other materials, also contains a quotation from "The Song of Wandering Aengus," by poet William Butler Yeats: "And seek till time and time is done ... the silver apples of the moon ... the golden apples of the sun."

"I like the whole golden beauty of it," said Susan Curzon, dean of the university library.

Robert Curtis Wilson was born in Sullivan, Ind., in 1926. Following service in the Army during World War II, he moved to Granada Hills, set up a studio and attended San Fernando Valley State College, which at the time was a satellite campus of Los Angeles State College. It eventually became CSUN.

Wilson earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the college, and taught art at Northridge Junior High and Pierce College. He later moved east to teach at State University College in Buffalo, N.Y.

Best known as a landscape painter, Wilson's works currently hang in private and public collections across the United States. He is listed in The International Bibliographic Files of Venice, Italy, and Who's Who in Arts and Antiques.

He authored books of art, historical fiction, murder mysteries, and 12 unpublished children's books, which he also illustrated. He died of cancer in 1996.

"When we read that story in The Sundial, it was really touching," said Cindy Ventuleth, director of development for the library, who noted that a plaque with the Sundial article hangs near the painting. "It's a really nice ending."

"It's come full circle," agreed Marilyn Wilson's brother, Richard LaDuca of Pleasanton. "We've all been to college, we've all had careers, and it's nice to be remembered for something."