Charles Kaufmann was born in Miami, Florida, in 1961.  He majored in computers and mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta from 1979 to 1982.  Pursuing an interest in the fine arts, and encouraged by his father (himself a sculptor and graphic designer), Kaufmann changed majors and enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. 

Kaufmann studied painting and etching at the Pennsylvania Academy from 1982 to 1986 under Louis Sloan, Roswell Weidner and Ed O'Brien.  He has received numerous awards, including the Cadwallader Landscape Prize, Silver Spring Landscape Prize, the Mayors Award, the Bunkin Graphics Prize, and the Wolf Graphics Prize.  In 1985, he received the Cresson Traveling Scholarship and went abroad to study in Spain, Italy, and Portugal.

Kaufmann has exhibited at the Amos Eno Gallery in New York, Rittenhouse Square, and at the Key West Florida Art and Historical Society.

Kaufmann resided in New Jersey and traveled each year to Key West and the Catskill Mountains to find inspiration for his landscape paintings.  In 2001, he immigrated to Africa, where he currently resides.