Biography
George J. Pichl is an independent artist influenced by a mix of personal experience and historical roots which lie in the European tradition of the artist-craft person.For the first two decades of his life he lived in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic, a UNESCO World Heritage Site containing many different architectural styles. In his teens George became fascinated with black and white photography and by his early twenties began sculpting in plaster and clay. At that time he produced a portrait of his grandfather, and while the bust remains at the family's cemetery plot to this day, George himself was forced to emigrate to Canada following the Soviet invasion of his homeland in 1968.
After graduating from the University of Toronto, George established a successful career teaching art and mathematics to secondary school students at various locations throughout the GTA over a period of almost three decades.
His original thematic influences included architecture and portraits, his style of imagery reflecting an interest in the iconography of objects. Since moving to his current home in the rolling hills of Northumberland County in 1999, George has produced dozens of abstract welded steel sculptures and even a few stone and cement assemblages. Some of these form components of his "sculpture garden" located north of Grafton, Ontario. Others are part of permanent exhibits at nearby Shelter Valley Pines Golf Club. He has also exhibited metal abstract sculptures as a member of the dynamic Colborne Art Gallery collective.
In 2010 he won a sculpture competition for the city of Cobourg's new community centre. The large steel sculpture assembly entitled “Source” was successfully installed in June of 2011.
George likes to test his visual ideas by posting them first in two dimensions on Flickr.com, the popular photo sharing site. He then makes scale models in his studio and enlarges the more successful ones employing metal, cement and/or wood. Many of these end up in his sculpture garden which he named "Bohemian Forest" in honour of that region of his homeland.
He likes to think of these sculptures as experiments frozen in time.