Rufus Zogbaum

Battle of the Big Hole, Magazine Cover

1895

Born in 1948, Rufus F. Zogbaum comes from an illustrious family of artists. His great-grandfather, the famous American illustrator with the same name, Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum and his father, sculptor Wilfrid Meynell Zogbaum, were both artists. Rufus’s mother, Elisabeth “Betsy” Ross Zogbaum was a close friend and companion of painter Franz Kline. In Rufus’s work, one can identify links to the countless artistic influences of his life. Rufus grew up in the 1950s and 1960s around some of the most famous artists, writers and poets of that era. Many of these artists, including Franz Kline, came to be known as part of an informal group called the New York School. Rufus also came to know the founders of Abstract Expressionism. A select list of these artists included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, John Ferren, Lee Krasner, Mark Rothko, Myron Stout, Giorgio Cavallon, Vita Petersen and Jack Tworkov. Zogbaum attended the Philadelphia College of Arts, where he graduated in 1970. Soon after graduating, Zogbaum moved to Chicago, where he held a studio at the iconic Contemporary Art Workshop in Lincoln Park. For nearly 40 years, he was featured in numerous group shows and solo exhibitions throughout the US, including one at the Manny Silverman Gallery in Los Angeles in 1991. Rufus eventually moved back to New York and continued to live and work there as an artist and paintings conservator. Around 2009, Rufus decided to pursue another passion – woodworking. Rufus’ works of art can be found in public and private collections throughout the US. He moved to Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and pursues his hobbies of woodworking and kayaking. He first encountered Greenland style paddling in the early 2000s at the Mystic Seaport and has been fascinated with Greenland style paddling ever since. He has built a CLC Shearwater 16 kayak and several paddles.