| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Peter Shostak is an artist best known for his storytelling paintings and serigraphs about Ukrainian pioneer life. He paints accessible and popular memories in a crisp, uncomplicated style such as children cavorting in snow, the warmth of a glowing hearth on a long winter night, and the endless and endlessly rewarding toil and ritual of prairie life.
Shostak devoted five years of painting to his most ambitious project, a series of work entitled For Our Children. This series included fifty large oil paintings that portrayed early pioneer settlement in Western Canada, based on Ukrainian pioneer experiences. For Our Children also included background stories gleaned from Shostak’s many years of research, and resulted in the publishing of a coffee table book of the same name, and a cross-Canada exhibition tour of the large-scale paintings.
Shostak graduated with a Masters Degree in Art Education from the University of Alberta. He then went on to teach at the University of Victoria as Assistant Professor of Art Education for a decade, and resigned in 1979 to pursue his own art career. In 2003, he received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in recognition of his outstanding exemplary contribution to Canada. He was also the recipient of the Taras Shevchenko Medal, the highest honour awarded by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. Shostak lives and paints in Courtenay, B.C.
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