Otis Oldfield

Born July 3, 1890, in Sacramento, Otis Oldfield was among the more senior artists on the Coit Tower project. He was an indifferent student, preferring to hop freight trains to studying, but showed a talent for art at an early age. After high school he worked at a print shop in Sacramento and then moved to San Francisco in 1908 to study art at Best's Art School. In 1911, the 21-year-old Oldfield moved to the artist colony of Montmartre in Paris and spent more than a decade there, where in addition to art he studied bookbinding. He returned to California in 1924, began teaching at CSFA and moved to Telegraph Hill in 1926 as a newlywed. He had a prolific career as a painter, changing styles dramatically in the late 1930s to something more akin to impressionism. He also worked in graphic arts and bookbinding, executed the bar windows at the Stock Exchange Club in 1930, and served as a draftsman during WWII. He began teaching at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in 1946 while continuing to produce paintings and mount one-man shows at major Bay Area galleries. In 1960 he bought a cabin in Alta, California, in the gold country, where he died in 1969. 

Works in Coit Tower:

San Francisco Bay

Seabirds