Terry Hoff

He grew up in Lodi, California in California's Central Valley, amidst vineyards, migrant workers, small farms, and became aware of his life through the lens of San Francisco in the 1970s.

He left San Francisco's Central Valley to attend art school on a summer scholarship in 1978. He decided to study illustration instead of painting. He dropped out of art school after winning numerous awards, and decided that he did not like his graduate teachers and would venture out on his own.

Within months he was producing freelance illustrations for advertising agencies and small tech companies. After completing a freelance illustration for Atari's Asteroid video game, he was offered a full-time artist position and went on to produce dozens of images for Atari's video game cartridges.

After a year, Atari let the art staff go and Hoff re-entered the freelance illustration business. Included in his illustration career was marriage, a family, illustration awards, a variety of editorial work, advertising and movie posters, all while maintaining his studio practice and personal work.

In the early 1990s, it was a beautiful time in San Francisco, the young artist group and small galleries were beginning to take hold in the Mission District.

He had the good fortune to show in some of the early venues, and he eventually showed with Four Walls, who showed Four Walls, who showed some of what would become the artists of the "missionary school". mission school" artists. He was in the first "Bay Area Now" with all the "missionary school" artists and won a Eureka grant from the Fleishhacker Foundation a year later. He began exhibiting in New York at Rare Gallery in the then meatpacking district in the late 1990s and in China Town in Los Angeles also with Acuna Hansen.