Rich Sigberman has been drawing since 1955, when he discovered that a ball point pen can gauge marks into the wood of a Mother’s dressing table. Since then, he has been drawing and painting nearly all the time, being influenced by diverse aspects of art and culture such as comic strips, Hollywood movies of the 1930s, jazz music, animated cartoons, Rembrandt, Diebenkorn, and Bosch. Somehow all of these influences coalesced into Rich’s art.

He went to the State University of New York at Albany from 1969-72, where the art department teachers had no idea what to do with him. Fortunately for Rich, the college library had a nearly hidden room full of 19th Century children’s books, whose illustrators he studied.

He moved to San Francisco in 1973, where he still lives. Back then, he sold his art down by the Ferry Plaza, and picked up illustration work from Last Gasp Publications. From 1983-87, he worked as a newspaper illustrator at the Palo Alto Times Tribune, prolifically illustrating articles for all the departments, in many styles. It was good art training for him.

Today, Rich balances his career between commercial art and fine art, with a great deal of stylistic overlap. He has been working on integrating aspects of his abstract and sequential art, commercial images, and jazz musicians.

(Below are some samples of Rich’s artwork. Click for more samples.)

• Abstract paintings
• “Facet” – a portrait group art show
• “Presence” group art show (first anniversary) 
• Solo show