After Recess

William Kurelek was born near Whitford, Alberta on March 3, 1927, the oldest of seven children in a Ukrainian immigrant family. His father, Dmytro Kurelek, was born in Boriwtsi, Bukovina, and his mother, Mary Huculak, was born in Canada to a family that had come with the first wave of Ukrainian immigration.

During the Great Depression, his family lost their grain farm and moved to a six-hundred-acre former dairy farm near Stonewall, Manitoba around 1933. Kurelek attended a one-room schoolhouse visible from their farm. For high school, his father moved the family to Winnipeg, where Kurelek attended Isaac Newton High School and Ukrainian school at St. Mary the Protectoress Ukrainian Orthodox church.

Kurelek graduated from high school in 1946 and completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Manitoba in 1949. By this time, his family had relocated to Vinemount, Ontario. Despite his parents' discouragement of his artistic interests, Kurelek enrolled at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. He was influenced by the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco.

Kurelek later studied at the Instituto Allende in Mexico and traveled to England in 1952. Suffering from clinical depression and emotional problems, he admitted himself into the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital in London where he was treated for schizophrenia. During his hospitalization, he produced significant works including "The Maze," a dark depiction of his troubled youth. He was later transferred to Netherne Hospital, where he worked with Edward Adamson, a pioneer of art therapy, and created several masterpieces.

In 1957, Kurelek converted to Roman Catholicism, which would deeply influence his later work. By the end of 1956, he was working for F.A. Pollak Limited, an elegant framing shop near Buckingham Palace, where he learned gilding techniques that would later influence his painting methods.

Kurelek returned to Canada in 1959 and held his first exhibition at the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto in 1960. The prestigious Alfred Barr from the Museum of Modern Art in New York chose Kurelek's "Hailstorm in Alberta" for the museum's collection in 1961, bringing him significant recognition.

On October 8, 1962, Kurelek married Jean Andrews. They had three children by 1966 and later adopted a fourth.

Kurelek's work often reflected his Ukrainian-Canadian roots, his religious convictions, and rural prairie life. Between 1959 and 1970, he created 160 paintings on the Passion of Christ. His ethnic awareness led to collaborations with various cultural communities, including a series celebrating Ukrainian women pioneers and another on Jewish life in Canada.

Kurelek began publishing illustrated books in the early 1970s. His first book, "A Prairie Boy's Winter," was published by May Cutler of Tundra Books and won the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award in 1974. He also illustrated a new edition of W.O. Mitchell's "Who Has Seen the Wind" in 1974 and won another Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award for "A Prairie Boy's Summer" in 1976.

Throughout his career, Kurelek traveled extensively, visiting the Holy Land, Europe, and Ukraine. He created series depicting the Nativity in various Canadian settings and completed works representing different ethnic communities in Canada.

Kurelek was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) and in 1976 was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada (CM).

He died of cancer in Toronto on November 3, 1977. His archives and a substantial body of his work are held at the Niagara Falls Art Gallery and at Archives Canada.

By the time of his death, Kurelek had produced over 2,000 paintings, establishing himself as an important Canadian artist known for his realistic and symbolic works that recorded his heritage and religious vision.