MY BIOGRAPHY by MARGO HOFF

I am a painter living in New York City. I am an autobiographical artist in that I have always used the events, places, images, remembrances of my life as central themes of my work. I am looking for an essence, or inner life of an idea.
When asked what my influences have been my answer is "Almost anything except the work of other artists." I've been influenced by rocks, weeds, views from airplanes, rivers, subways, forests, machines, kinds of light, red things and imagination.
One of my constant companions is my sketchbook. Since it is a small black book, people have thought me a poet, a scholar, a religious person carrying a prayer book. Once at Customs in Moscow my sketchbook was taken from me (later returned) because my notes were a “code.” The sketches are actually a kind of shorthand writing. The world moves so quickly that images are blurred or lost. I try to record responses and moments. Later, I work with the note-sketches, developing them to the final form.
I was born into a large family, six brothers and one sister, and into a small house. This made it natural to spend much time out of doors. In Oklahoma the summers were long and hot and filled with small adventures. In my childhood explorations of nature (plants, rocks, caves, landscapes) I made discoveries that I use even now in my painting.
At six years, I modeled small animals and people from clay that the well drillers dug. I learned about color from rocks, leaves, and berries. A game we had was "coloring rocks." We pounded small rocks to dust, mashed berries or leaves, made colors, painted surfaces of large rocks and let them dry in the sun. At eleven I had typhoid fever. For a summer I was bedridden. I did many drawings and cutouts, and my imagination came alive.
Thirteen was an important year. I began high school. I saw an oil painting for the first time. It was called "Moonrise on Blue River." I began drawing from a live model, from casts, from imagination. I did a mural on four sides of the art room.
The following year I won a silver medal in "Free-Hand Drawing" at the Scholastic Meet at the University of Oklahoma. Many years later I won another silver medal, at the Art Institute of Chicago...

[To continue reading Margo Hoff's autobiography, go to Categories on the MargoHoff.com homepage, and select "Reference/Books." This will take you to scanned pages from World Artists 1980-1990. Scroll down to page 182, left column, third complete paragraph, which picks up the narration where the above text left off.]