Robert was born into a family that encouraged self-expression and personal artistic journeys. His journey has given him a rich a varied background--he spent part of his youth attending a radical art camp called Lincoln Farm, he went on to expand his personal and artistic horizons by travel throughout the world, and found work in Amsterdam as a government supported artist.
He eventually settled in to a 30 year career at Shasta College in Redding, CA as a professor of theater, directing and lighting countless productions. He has curated dozens of exhibitions and is credited with discovering the Violent Femmes. During the last ten years, Soffian ventured from the public world of the theater to the private world of painting.
Soffian says this about his work, “I wish to paint things we all know or dream…very often I am first motivated by the excitement of the materials I am using…obviously I enjoy vibrant colors, and the texture of the physical body of the paint…for some reason, I have felt I needed to express something….what is the nature of that need and what it is compels me to keep doing this work is the subject of my life.”