Remembering Tom Prochaska. We are deeply saddened to announce that legendary artist Tom Prochaska has passed.
Born March 9, 1945 Chicago, IL, and died March 3, 2026, Portland, OR.
Maker of marks, fly fisherman, teacher, brother, uncle, and good friend to many, visionary artist Tom Prochaska left us all on March 3, 2026 in Portland, Oregon. The middle child born to Valerie (Schrom) and Arthur Prochaska in Chicago, Illinois on March 9, 1945, Thomas “Tom” was raised in a tightly knit family, including sisters Nancy and Teri. He spent his childhood in Des Plaines, Illinois, where an elementary school teacher encouraged his art making by supplying him with materials and setting aside space and time for Tom to explore his practice, a testament to the impact one teacher can have on a student.
Tom went on to receive a BA from University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1968, and an MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, in 1970. He spent the 1970s in New York, Switzerland, Connecticut, and Georgia, working in print studios, teaching, making art, and fishing. Perhaps the most artistically formative time for Tom was the time he spent with printmaker Edmond Quinche at Atelier de Saint-Prex in Switzerland—an experience that shaped Tom’s lifelong approach to his work.
In 1980, Tom was lured to Portland, Oregon to explore the Pacific Northwest “wonderland” and teach at the Oregon School of Art and Crafts. Likely most well-known from this time period were Tom’s fish print t-shirts that he sold at the Portland Saturday Market and out of the back of his pick-up truck to fly fishing enthusiasts and art appreciators alike. Tom went on to teach at several Oregon art institutions throughout the 1980s, including Marylhurst University and Portland State University, ultimately becoming a lead and tenured print, drawing and painting professor at Pacific Northwest College of Art in 1988, where he taught full time until his retirement in 2012.
The excerpt below is by friend and artist, Morgan Walker, from the 2014 monograph titled Tom Prochaska.
“In the 1980s he cut the fish woodblocks on panels from old television and stereo cabinets. When the images were screened onto T-shirts he spent two summers driving an orange Toyota pickup to all the big rivers from Oregon to Montana, camping, fly-fishing, and selling T-shirts to fly shops. For a while he made a living just on the shirts. He put an ad in a fishing magazine to sell the prints themselves, and while he didn’t sell a lot, they still have a following, word-of-mouth, among western fishermen. One ended up on a Pendleton blanket. He’s kept the blocks all this time, and is printing a salmon this week.”
Tom influenced a generation of artists as both a teacher and artist, playing an important role in Portland’s cultural growth. Known primarily as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman, he explored a range of materials, including figurative sculptures made from papier-mâché and an extensive body of work created in kiln-formed glass. Locally, Tom was an instrumental early member of Inkling Studios, a cooperative printmaking workshop founded by Liza Jones in 1981. Later, in 1990, Prochaska co-founded prominent Portland print studio Atelier Mars with artist Martha Pfanschmidt.
Museums, universities and public institutions throughout the United States and the world exhibited Tom’s work during his lifetime. Most recently, in 2023, curator Jonathan Bucci of The Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon curated a retrospective exhibition reviewing Prochaska’s career. The exhibit and accompanying monograph were titled Tom Prochaska: Music For Ghosts. The exhibition featured 70 works spanning over 50 years including paintings, drawings, prints, papier-mâché
sculpture and work on glass. Tom’s work can be found in permanent collections at the Tacoma Art Museum, The Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon, The Portland Art Museum, The China National Academy of Fine Arts, and The New York Public Library. In 2004 the State of Oregon comissioned Prochaska to make a series of paintings for the Governor’s Art Awards, and in 2025 he was a recipient of the Ford Family Foundation’s Visual Arts Fellowship.
The excerpt below is from the 2023 monograph titled Tom Prochaska: Music For Ghosts,
by Johnathon Bucci, Hallie Ford Museum of Art:
“Tom Prochaska is well known in the Northwest for his open-ended narrative work created through a variety of mediums, depicting a cast of characters who populate small villages, cafés, industrial or desolate landscapes, domestic interiors, and creative spaces like studios or stages. With a wry smile, he captures a mood found in the tensions between foreboding and hope and tells stories that feel simultaneously vague and specific, walking a line between abstraction and representation. It is visual poetry that evades immediate analysis or deconstruction, hitting like an abstract emotion extracted from the fog of a dream.”
Throughout his life, Tom’s artistic journey was marked by a distinctive approach, oscillating between observational “en plein air” studies and an intuitive, stream-of-consciousness method, where each brushstroke responds to those before it. Sometimes the end result was a clear narrative, other times, the scenes invited interpretation.
Solo exhibitions of his art include: 1972, University of Georgia; 1975, St. Cergue Gallery Bibliotheque, St. Cergue, Switzerland; 2000, 30 year survey of his graphic works hosted by Sheehan Gallery, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, and Archer Gallery at Clark College, Vancouver, Washington; and in 2018, l’Associazione Amici dell’Atelier Calcografico di Novazzano, Associazione Biblioteca Salita dei Frati, Lugano, Switzerland. Prochaska was in many group exhibits including: 2014, Tacoma Art Museum, Washington; 2007, Palos Verdes Art Center, Rancho Palos Verdes, California; 2005, and Art Gym, Marylhurst University, Marylhurst, Oregon.
Tom worked with galleries across the US and in Europe. Oregon galleries included Attic Gallery, Whitebird Gallery, and the Portland Art Museum’s Rental Sales Gallery (all in the early 1980s), from 1988 to 1999 he had an especially fruitful representation with Quartersaw Gallery, and in 2000 he began representation with Froelick Gallery, Portland where his work remains treasured, and central to the gallery’s identity. Charles Froelick comments “I first saw Tom’s paintings in the early 1990s at Quartersaw, and I immediately knew he was a powerful artist! The entire show was filled with knock-out, mysterious, intense and joyful works. His work was and remains so unique, it affirms to me the reasons to keep looking at art.” .
When Tom moved to Willamette View Retirement Community he continued to paint with vigor. The facility requested that he change his media of oil paint—due to the fumes—to using acrylic. Tom quickly adapted. The paintings and drawings from this time are remarkable and fresh. He even used the paper place mats during mealtimes to make elaborate drawings on them. Tom said that as long as he could still hold a brush and paint, that is what he wanted to do—and he proceeded to do just that.
A special thank you to the caring staff of the Willamette View community for your support of Tom through the very end of his vibrant and creative life. Prochaska was a prolific artist and leaves behind an extensive body of exceptional works. The Tom Prochaska Trust will work to continue his legacy. Most importantly Tom leaves behind his loving family, a close group of chosen family, friends, fellow artists, and former students.
Boiler Room, Steelhead, and Just Enough, a memorial retrospective exhibit of Prochaska’s works will be on view at
Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis, Portland, April 1 –May 2, 2026
Special First Thursday Reception, April 2, 5–8 pm
Celebration of Tom’s Life at Froelick Gallery, April 11, 5 pm
