William Lazos
Lazos’s portfolio of work is extensive. The City of Toronto Art Collection, the Art Gallery of Peel in Brampton, the Howard and Judith A. Tullman Collection in Chicago, the Royal Canadian Mint, and the Standard Chartered Bank in London, UK, are just a few of the public and private collections in Canada, the US, and abroad that have acquired his paintings.
Lazos began exhibiting across Canada, the US, and Europe in 1984 following his graduation from the Ontario College of Art.
His 325+ murals in Toronto include major commissions for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, the Queen West Health Centre, and, at Toronto’s Princess of Wales Theatre, a project for Frank Stella, the highly regarded American abstract artist.
Lazos’s subjects — carnival scenes, colourful commercial products, and other contemporary cultural objects — call on all the senses in their striking detail.
Using a combination of meticulous airbrush and paintbrush techniques to capture subtle plays of light and complex textural surfaces, his painted surfaces are technically precise and smoothly rendered.
More than photographic imitation, his paintings combine haze and sharp focus, document and memory, hyper-realism and childlike wonder to mesmerizing effect.
All works of art on this page Copyright © 2016 William Lazos. All Rights Reserved.
“William’s dedication to nurturing and honoring his personal stylistic identity, has manifested itself as an honest and revealing record of the artist’s life, memories and friends. His distinctive human subject matter includes a variety of portraiture of people of all ages caught up in fleeting moments of reflection, awe and delight. These mesmerizing portraits render their subjects under such penetrating and untarnished realism that viewers cannot help but feel privy to glimpse into their innermost spirits.”
Arabella Design Magazine, Summer 2012.
“William Lazos has, over the years developed a steady and dynamic body of work that is immersed in the culture of our times and that involves a process of painting that, while it looks deceptively simple, is fact intricate and multi-layered.
Lazos has a flair for capturing scenarios we can all identify with. While these works are comparable to photography, the way Lazos works with the surfaces of his subjects builds a unity into each work brings them to another level. He binds it all together with light.”
‘William Lazos: Transforming the Everyday with Light', John K. Grande
