| Paul R. Toews Artist Bios:
My roots are in the country. In the fields of my parents’ farm which was nestled among the foothills of the Cascades. I learned the pride of hard work and practical wisdom. Along the wooded ridges bordering those fields and the hedgerows that ran through them, I soaked in the poetry of nature. In young adulthood, the timbered mountains pulled me into a life as a timber man.
There I satisfied the physical need to be tested and the mental urge to walk the edge.Yet the mystique of nature was a force that drove my creativity, compelling me to express myself more and more. My focus became visual art and storytelling. This all started sometime before 2000 with a close call in the woods. Since then I have learned more, taught more, painted more and written more than all those previous years combined. This has included shows at Bush Barn, the Illustrated Gardens Gallery in Corvallis, Soda Creek Gallery in Sisters, Elsinore Gallery in Salem, ect.
I’ve taught workshops and classes at my cabin near Detroit Lake, at the Bush Barn, and Art Media in Salem, and for three years in my gallery called Art Gone Wild in Stayton. I’ve taught many other places such as Breitenbrush, North Idaho, the coast area, and as far east as Boston, Massachusetts. After closing my gallery, I continued classes in my own studio on Third Avenue in Stayton’s quaint downtown. I also teach art, storytelling, and what I call “Life Studies” for a wilderness therapy school for at-risk teens.
I have trouble with bios. Yet I just wrote one. They seem to conflict with an upbringing where action had more ment than words, and tooting one’s own horn was left for the braggart.
What I really want to say is that I am a living, breathing, struggling, celebrating human being who has been given some “soul tools” to work with. My job is to use those tools to help and inspire others along this adventure called life.
|
|---|
