Born in 1941, Melvin Geisenhofer was a fixture at the Creativity Explored studio from 1985 until 2009 when he moved away from San Francisco.
Expressive color and repetition characterizes Geisenhofer’s artwork. With oil pastel or acrylic paint and ink, he creates complex compositions of marks combined with some figurative elements. In the past his works had more recognizable faces often with wide, toothy grins. Now Geisenhofer tends to abstract and obliterate the faces with layer upon layer of marks in a thick network. He has also recently been painting on larger canvases resulting in looser, less constrained pieces. As his instructor observes, “his work is expressionistic and dense, yet it often retains a lightness.”