H.M. Saffer II

H.M. Saffer II (born 1942 in Philadelphia) is an American artist whose career has moved between painting, music, and international work, with each track feeding the other. He showed his work publicly as a child and remained committed to painting even as his professional path expanded into other creative industries. After graduating from Temple University in 1965, he traveled to Paris to pursue graduate economics courses while also immersing himself in the city’s cultural scene. During those years he performed with notable French musicians, worked in music production, and maintained an active studio practice, exhibiting work in Europe and building an early reputation for range and ambition.

Returning to the United States in 1970, Saffer continued working in music at a high level while keeping painting central. He co-wrote the internationally known song “Look What They Done to My Song, Ma,” and his career included leadership roles in music production and commercial work, producing for major brands and entertainment projects. Through all of it, his visual work continued to evolve, and a pivotal shift came in the early 1980s when he began studying Japanese brush painting, sumi-e. He traveled to Japan in 1983 to study with masters, where he met his wife, Hisayo, and began adapting traditional sumi-e techniques through a Western lens, a blend that became a lasting hallmark of his style.

Saffer returned to the U.S. in the mid-1990s and settled in Upstate New York, expanding his practice beyond works on paper into oils and continuing to merge Eastern and Western approaches into a single visual language. He has taught at institutions including the Norman Rockwell Museum and has maintained gallery representation and exhibitions in the United States and internationally. Across decades of work, what defines Saffer is not one medium or one subject, but a consistent willingness to move between disciplines and cultures while keeping the studio practice active, serious, and always evolving. ×