An East Vancouver Digital Artist shares his favourite purchased mixed media artwork

Upon arrival Stefan Tosheff offered me a chamomile tea as he showed me around his palatial home in East Vancouver that he shares with 4 other roommates.

His home is full of an assortment of kitsch toy dinosaurs, artwork and decor. It even has a fully stocked tiki bar ready for entertaining at a moments’ notice.

Stefan came across his favourite artwork, a creation by Terby Wonder, who is a super prolific local Vancouver artist after seeing him post it online. This isn’t the first artwork Stefan has by Terby and he goes on to share with me more about how they came to know each other. 

I used to do the SNAG live painting event through a friend from school, Drew Young (the Co-Founder and Lead Curator of Vancouver Mural Festival fame) and he invited me to participate in a gallery collection of Visual Artists at the Aidan Gallery in Tinseltown where we first connected.

He scours the back of the painting and mentions this is his favourite work that he’s purchased. 

It’s a mixed media piece. This is a character from anime (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and is a mashup of different medias (pencil, marking, acrylics, spray paints and the blocking of areas to create dynamic shapes). It has very well done rendering, great composition and intelligent colour choices which bring all the chaos together to make sense. For example, the high colour contrasts meld the shapes rather than confusing the eye. 

I’ve spent a lot of time analysing it and don’t really have huge emotional reactions to art as a result. For me it’s either I enjoy it or I don’t, and it makes me feel good because it is good.

Stefan takes me around to another piece by Terby, a line drawing of a woman’s face awash in a mixture of pastel watercolours hanging on the wall in his living room. I find the abstraction of reality, along with the good line work really shows you he just knows what he’s doing, it doesn’t have to make sense.

One of Stefan’s most recent creations

As a digital artist, Stefan spends his days creating and moonlighting as a guitarist in the band Tidy (Sad Boy Punk Rock Music) along with a few too many more to list.

You can check out his artwork at https://linktr.ee/stefantosheff