soCurio | art is for everyone

Oil paint is my primary medium and I also make etchings. In general my subjects fall into three categories: still life, landscape, and portraiture.

At the moment I am excited about exploring a series of paintings revolving around marine conservation. My first in a By Catch Series is “El Principio del Fin” or “The Beginning of the End” which depicts the by catch (i.e. all the extra sea life caught up in the nets which is thrown away) on a trawler fishing for orange roughy, an unsustainable sea food species currently being overfished. This painting was selected for the 2010 Newport Art Museum’s Annual Members Exhibition.

It was about five years ago that I quit my job managing a surf & windsurf shop to pursue working as an artist full-time. This is something I wanted to do for a long time, having been a student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Mass Art when I was in my twenties and thirties (I reached the half-century mark in 2004).
It was also about five years ago that I started researching my great great grandfather Stephen Alonzo Schoff (1818-1904), who was one of America’s finest engravers and etchers of the 19th century. Through my discovery of his life, his artwork, and that of his associates, I’ve found a greater appreciation for American art of their era, and the influence on my work is sometimes plain to see.