Artist's Bio

John Tomsick was born in Trinidad, Colorado.  His grandparents emigrated from Slovenia to the coalfields of Southern Colorado.  In 1970 John and his family moved to Mariposa, California, and began teaching high school science and math.  Although John showed a talent for art from an early age, he enrolled in his first oil painting class the year he moved to Mariposa. 

Soon, he began working on different surfaces and was attracted to rougher textures such as burlap, which he glued to masonite panels and then applied gesso.  He also tried mixing fine sand with gesso or simply flat white acrylic paint and applying the mixture on masonite.

Trying out watercolor, John did a series based on well-known boxing matches during the 50s featuring Sugar Ray Robinson, Gene Fullmer, and Carmen Basillio. Always wanting to try something new, John began experimenting with watercolor combined with pastel on a wet and dry surface.

John’s love of jazz inspired him to do a series based on photographs of artists in performance.  He used pastel and vine charcoal on colored and black mat board, as well as drawing paper.  Jazz works based on jazz greats, including Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and others, are shown on the Jazz page.  In the June 2014 edition of the Pinyon Review, many of these jazz works were featured.

Returning once again to working on a textured surface, John’s recent works combine watercolor and pastel on crumpled watercolor paper.  He finds that working with the random folds in the paper leads to unexpected and creative effects.  A series using this technique and based on French cave paintings can be viewed on the Cave Art page.  Recently, Bushmen art inspired John to do a new series using the crumpled paper technique.

John’s work can be seen at the Mariposa County Arts Council Tree House Gallery. All of these works and more can be viewed by appointment at the Tomsick Studio and Gallery in Mariposa, California.