John Dyck

John Dyck was born in 1921 in a small town in present day Ukraine to a Mennonite family. He grew up in the Mennonite enclave near the Black Sea and attended art school, studying in the classic European styles of landscape painting and portraiture. As well, he trained as a teacher, also following his father with studies in mathematics. He suffered the persecution of families who had fallen under the Stalin purge with his paintings not being displayed at state-sponsored art shows. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II, Dyck traveled to relatives in Berlin, and at the conclusion of the war he was granted an allied passport for Displaced Persons and worked in occupied Germany, where he also married in 1946. In 1948 he was sponsored by his uncle to emigrate to Canada and he arrived in Saskatchewan in August 1948. His first painting in Canada was done in the autumn and depicts an "old time" Ukrainian village scene, painted on white-washed burlap. With art not a profession that would "pay the bills" to become established in a new country, Dyck went into business, first making shoes and then building up a shoe retail business in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Time he had spent producing design sketches in a shoe factory while working in Germany gave him an edge on understanding the product. While building up his business he continued to paint and tutored private students. Soon he was asked to teach art classes at the local community college and later in Saskatoon. In the 1980s, he moved to Saskatoon and turned his full attention to painting. In later years Dyck acted as a type of "artist in residence" for several amateur art groups in Saskatoon. Throughout this time he continued to sell paintings and complete commissions, and today his prairie scenes adorn many commercial offices and homes throughout Saskatchewan and beyond. John Dyck died in Saskatoon in 2005.