Additional Images

Provenance:

Courtesy of the artist.

The Work & Artist Bio

Andrew Valko, an accomplished painter, has consistently maintained a parallel interest in printmaking. He studied the art form at the Yoshida Hanga Academy in Tokyo in 1983 and 1985. This set of 12 signed and editioned intimate pieces become a single work in which the animals of the Chinese Zodiac are given form through images that display formal invention and a multi-coloured palette. The production years run from 2011 (Rabbit) to 2022 (Tiger). Valko designs a world in which a man’s thought can emerge from his mouth as a snake’s forked tongue, and a woman’s luxurious braid easily transforms into a coiling dragon.

Andrew Valko was born in 1957 in Prague, Czechoslovakia and came to Canada in 1968. He received a Diploma in Graphic Design and Applied Arts from the Red River Community College, Winnipeg, and studied printmaking at Yoshida Hanga Academy in Tokyo, Japan in 1983 and 1985. He currently lives and works in Winnipeg and Vancouver, and is represented by Mayberry Fine Arts, Winnipeg and Toronto and Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York. Valko’s work has been included in numerous national and international solo and group shows in Canada, USA, Germany, France, Japan and Taiwan, as well in Art Fairs in Toronto, Miami, Pittsburgh, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and New York. His work is represented in wide range of public, corporate and private collections including The Canada Council Art Bank, University of Manitoba, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Nickel Art Museum, Calgary; the Royal Canadian Mint, Ottawa; Via Rail Canada Inc., Canada Post Corporation, Ottawa; Burnet Duckworth & Palmer, Calgary; Price Waterhouse Cooper, LLP, Vancouver; Diamond Investment Group Ltd., Vancouver; and Louis K. Meisel Collection, New York. His work has been published and reviewed by publications including Border Crossings, The New Yorker Magazine, Canadian Art, and Beautiful Bizarre Magazine. Valko has done numerous portrait commissions for the Manitoba Government, University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg and The City of Winnipeg, and was the winner of the 2009 Kingston Prize, Canada’s national portrait competition.

Motel Paintings and Drawings, Border Crossings Issue 55, 1995

Valko: The Summer of Our Discontents, Border Crossings Issue 29, 1989

Artist's Website

Mayberry Fine Art

Louis K. Meisel Gallery