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| | ARTIST NAME: | Tosczak, George | | ACCESSION NUMBER: | 1999.007.003 | | TITLE: | MY DESPERATE ROOTS (I LIVED HERE IN THE 1930'S) | | DATE: | 1998 | | CATEGORY: | Painting | | MEDIUM: | acrylic, egg tempera | | SUPPORT: | canvas | | DIMENSIONS: | Actual: 45.7 x 91.7 cm (18 x 36 1/8 in.)
Frame: 48.6 x 94.8 x 4.5 cm (19 1/8 x 37 5/16 x 1 3/4 in.) | | COLLECTION: | Alberta Foundation for the Arts |
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| | OTHER HOLDINGS: | Tosczak, George | | ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | George Tosczak is a self-taught artist who creates both abstract and landscape works, and who regularly paints with a heritage or folk-art feel. He often approaches his paintings narratively, adding small characters in the landscape to represent stories from his past and from his imagination. He includes short journal entries with many of his works, describing the action contained within the frame of the canvas.
Tosczak is a prolific painter, having painted in excess of two thousand canvases throughout his career. He began painting small prairie landscapes with abandoned buildings under expansive skies, and when he was transferred to Alberta for work, Tosczak graduated to creating large acrylic and egg tempura landscapes. He derives his inspiration from growing up during the dustbowl in southern Saskatchewan, and the poverty he experienced as a child. Some of his paintings carry great emotional impact, and others he paints simply to show how beautiful or ugly his surroundings were.
Tosczak was a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force for over 24 years, and was part of the first United Nations Emergency Peacekeeping force in the Middle East. He also served with NATO in Europe for seven years. It was while working under NATO that he began to paint, and he has never stopped. Tosczak returned to Canada in 1966, and in 1978 left the air force to work with the Alberta Department of Justice where he stayed until his retirement.
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