Featured Artist Marc Scheff

Artist Marc Scheff creates fantastical dimensional layered portraits with magical, softly focused faces caught in time. See more by visiting his website.

 

 

My name is Marc Scheff. I grew up in Boston and went to a combination of public and private schools where I was fortunate enough to have some truly supportive and inspiring teachers. I can remember times with each of these mentors when they encouraged me and even shielded me in service of my art.

 

 

My family was fairly conservative, so when I went to college I decided to major in computer science. I assumed I would get a tech job, make money and pay for art classes on the side. Art just didn’t seem like a viable career. I muscled my way through the major and graduated with honors.

 

 

In 1999, I moved to San Francisco for that tech job, and in 2002 I took my first art class on the side. By the end of 2002, I had left tech and enrolled full-time at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. I was again supported there by some incredible instructors, people who fanned the flames of my strengths and pushed me to improve my weaknesses.

 

 

In 2005 while I was still at school, I did my first professional gig for a game company. I knew nothing about the property or, as it turns out, a whole lot about making truly professional quality work.

 

 

Good news, they liked it and accepted the art. I also learned a lot on that first job about what it means to make art your career. I still keep that work around to remind myself to always strive to create better.

 

 

When I graduated, I got jobs that blended my tech and art skills. I was a flash animator, a creative director at a t-shirt company, a video game artist, a visual and UX designer and occasional freelancer. I also met someone special, and in 2008 I moved to New York to live with her. (More good news, it worked out.)

 

 

From there, I worked freelance making digital art off and on until 2014 when my own mentor pushed me to work on my traditional painting skills. I worked in acrylic and continued to explore themes in the realms of the fantastic.

 

 

In 2016 I had been reading/obsessing about habits and deliberate practice, so I spent every morning doing studies. These were just for me, just for practice, just for fun.

 

 

And like any good story that uses the phrase “just for fun,” that work became the foundation of a new body of work. This would be the first time my work was truly my own—it was both liberating and full of unknowns.

 

 

In the past, my work drew on the struggles I know we all face. Now, as I create the work for my new show, my focus is on themes of healing and strength—the powerful combination of fear and courage that ties itself inextricably to the human experience.

 

 

Today, I create fine art work using artresin and mixed media to create my images. I take a select few illustration gigs, and I teach illustration and drawing to students.

 

 

I also run an online art gallery called “Every Day Original” where we post one piece of work every day for sale from a killer team of artists. I’m also a father of two and work every day from a studio on our top floor. I’m very grateful for my family and their support as I navigate my creative journey.

 

Artist Marc Scheff invites you to follow him on Instagram and the online gallery he runs.

 

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