William Acheff (born 1947)
Born in Alaska in 1947, William Acheff moved with his family to San Francisco when he was age five. He lived in the Bay Area for twenty years and began painting in 1969 when, working as a barber, he came in contact with Roberto Lupetti, an Italian artist who gave him art lessons, assisted him in marketing his work with galleries. At first he worked from photographs but changed his technique to working from the objects themselves. He positions his subjects several feet from his easel and paints them in the north light of his studio. Known for his highly realistic still life’s, often combining objects of the present and the past, William Acheff became a resident in 1973 of Hondo, near Taos, New Mexico where he has his studio in his home.
Information courtesy of Cowans Auctions Inc, February 2005