Michael Schofield

Flower Song Landscape

1979

Michael Schofield, a landscape painter and printmaker, was born in Orlando, Florida, in 1947 and moved with his family to Oakland, California, that same year. Growing up, he thought he was going to play pro baseball. In his sophomore year at Oakland High School, under the tutelage of his art teacher Jackie Jensen (brother of internationally recognized watercolorist Robert Jensen), Schofield began to develop his skill in watercolor painting. For the next two years, according to Schofield, "he squeezed endless tubes of paint in his quest to master watercolor and get back to baseball." After high school, Schofield went into the military. Shortly thereafter, he left the Marines to attend the Harris School of Advertising Art in Nashville, Tennessee. During the summer term(s), he studied with well-known watercolorist John Pike, a contemporary of Robert Wood in Woodstock, New York. Two years later, he opened his art studio in Tennessee, where he says, "he taught, painted, and starved." Schofield maintained this studio for 12 years. 

In 1980, Schofield returned to California and opened his silkscreen printing studio, where he could create his original serigraphs. Schofield believes that art is fundamentally communication. He chooses to create more traditional landscapes because it is with this imagery that most people relate. "I paint landscapes because they speak to everyone. In sharing a place I have known, I know that others will see places they have known. In that way, I communicate with others without using a single word." Schofield's precision and exactitude somehow meld harmoniously with a more ethereal sense of a place. In this way, his work conveys at once the palpable and the perceptual about a place. He hopes to strike a visceral note in those who view his art, reawakening dormant memories and forgotten feelings. As a successful artist for many years, Schofield's work can be found in many private and corporate collections. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and seen on such popular motion picture films as The Bridges of Madison County, City Hall, Beethoven and others. He is also a member of the Tennessee Watercolor Society and the National Society of Artists.