artist profile: melvin geisenhofer

A dynamic collaboration with our friends at San Francisco’s Creativity Explored, a nonprofit visual arts center where artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit and sell art.

True to his expressive use of color and repetition, Creativity Explored artist Melvin Geisenhofer abstracts a whimsical woodland in tonal greens, heathered blues, taupe and tarp green using a shaded dyeing technique to achieve a sense of depth.

Born in 1941, Melvin has been a regular at the studio since 1985. In his early years at the studio, his works had more recognizable faces often with wide, toothy grins.

More recently Geisenhofer tends to abstract and obliterate the faces with layer upon layer of marks in a thick network—he’s also been painting on larger canvases resulting in looser, less constrained pieces.