Roy Imhoff, veterinarian, raconteur, tennis player and artist whose illustrations have appeared in the Vineyard Gazette since the late 1960s, died on April 4. He was 88 years old, and living in Pompton Plains, N.J. at the time of his death.
Mr. Imhoff began vacationing on the Vineyard in the 1950s, introduced to the Island by a fellow veterinarian. Over the many decades a routine was developed where Mr. Imhoff would spend much of his vacation drawing and then bring the finished pieces to the Gazette office for publication.
“Every place I go I take a sketch book,” Mr. Imhoff said in a 2013 interview with the Gazette. “I have a supportive wife. She takes a book.”
Menemsha was a frequent subject for Mr. Imhoff’s drawings, as was the Agricultural Fair, the Flying Horses, Great Rock Bight. He continued to visit the Vineyard into his early 80s. His work echoed back to a simpler and perhaps quieter time, the illustrations capturing iconic images as well as iconic feelings of a Vineyard summer.
Mr. Imhoff grew up on Ohio, graduated from Ohio State University veterinary school in 1959, and eventually opened the Nutley Animal Hospital, which he ran with his wife, Jacqueline, for 30 years. He specialized in smaller animals.
“Companion pets, no large animals,” he said in the 2013 interview. “Dogs, cats, reptiles, birds, that kind of thing.”
He began drawing as a kid, was mostly self-taught, and never stopped. His professional life informed his artistic life and vice versa. Working with animals helped keep him present to life, he said. And his chosen art form, illustration, suited this nature.
“I would like to wing it and do abstraction but I just can’t seem to do it, to get that in my head,” he said. “I’m not that inventive. So I really stick with what I see in my eye.”
He showed his work in galleries on the Vineyard, New Jersey and St. John, and was a contributor to the New Yorker and Gourmet Magazine.
He felt any success he had as an artist was due to hard work.
“I don’t believe a great deal in natural ability,” he said. “I believe in sweat. In my case, it was definitely sweat.”
Most of that sweat found its way into the Vineyard Gazette, where hundreds of his illustrations have been, and continue to be, published.
“I know I’m blowing my own horn but I think it gives the paper class,” he said.
His work also hangs in the permanent collection at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
Mr. Imhoff was predeceased by his wife Jacqueline, and his son Jeff. He is survived by his daughter Julie Ann Viola, son in law Jim Viola, grandson Thomas Viola and granddaughter, Caroline Viola.
There will be a memorial service in New Jersey in late July; details will be forthcoming.
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