Larry Toschik
Artist
1922–2012
Perfect Illustrations. That’s how we titled a June 2013 portfolio of the work of Larry Toschik, who had died the previous year.
“In March 1967, Arizona Highways featured some paintings by an unknown artist named Larry Toschik,” Editor Robert Stieve wrote. “They were included in a story titled Larry Toschik’s Wonderful World of Birds, and the response was overwhelming. Almost overnight, Mr. Toschik went from obscurity to international recognition as one of the world’s greatest wildlife artists. Over the next two decades, we published nearly 100 of his paintings.”
There were red-tailed hawks and mountain lions, black bears and desert cottontails, along with a delicate, muted study of a duck with her ducklings on a placid lake. In August 1971, Toschik sketched the anatomy of a wildflower, along with hummingbirds, bees and other pollinators. And in February 1979, he carried the issue: front cover, back cover, and every page in between with Prowlers of the Clouds, a feature about Arizona’s eagles, hawks and owls.
For me, though, the February 1982 issue is particularly meaningful. It’s the issue of the magazine that corresponds to when I was born, and it’s a Toschik cover that celebrates migratory shorebirds — the plovers, killdeer and sandpipers that pass through Arizona on their way to their warm winter homes. In his editor’s letter for that edition, Gary Avey wrote:
“Larry’s love of nature is a lifetime affair beginning with his youth in Wisconsin. In the abundant wetlands of the northern latitudes he learned, through hundreds of frosty dawns, the majesty of Nature’s stage. Clouds of pintails wheeling over pink-tinged morning lakes nurtured the thrust of his art to express this great appreciation. For over two decades his artistry has appeared in the pages of Arizona Highways, in drawings, layouts and paintings. Whether depicting a tawny young mountain lion or a family of Gambel’s quail promenading through a prickly pear forest, his sensitivity and observation always reach out to his viewers.”
And that exacting work has made Toschik a member of our inaugural Hall of Fame class.
— Kelly Vaughn
Arizona Highways inaugural Hall of Fame Inductees