About Me
For as long as I can remember, I have been creating art. Making something which touches another, not only with someone living today but perhaps with a person of a future generation, truly inspired me.
My preferred medium is oil paint. I proudly work in a traditional style. When I visit museums and galleries I gravitate towards viewing the art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A great deal of my inspiration comes from my great-great-grandfather, Stephen Alonzo Schoff (1818-1904), a well-known American bank note engraver during his lifetime, but for some reason his life and work have been largely forgotten, even within our branch of the family tree. In 2004 I started researching Mr. Schoff. I found his works in the Smithsonian, the MFA Boston, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. His artist friends included: Asher B. Durand, John F. Kensett, William Morris Hunt, and many others. In addition to his bank note engravings, his better known works included portraits of such literary luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, George Eliot, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I have collected a fair amount of Stephen Schoff's artwork. I have an aspiration to someday put together an exhibition of Stephen's etchings and engravings in a library, school, or museum. Contact me if interested. I have a Pinterest Board of a few examples of his work.
I studied art at the University of Colorado, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Mass Art, and RISD, however, I put my art career on hold while I worked in the surf and windsurf industries for twenty years. In 2005 my life came to a crossroads and I found myself at a point where I was poised to take on a great deal more business responsibility. It was then that I decided to walk away from selling windsurfers and spend my remaining time alive in pursuit of my artistic muse. I'm married to a wonderful wife who is a college professor and we have a lovely daughter who is a dancer.