Remembering Tom Prochaska, 1945–2026

Celebrated artist Tom Prochaska passed away on March 3, 2026. He was primarily a painter, printmaker and draftsman but also explored papier-mâché and kiln-formed glass, depicting people engaged in labors, street scenes and buildings, and pastoral landscapes. His ragged characters and spatial experiments have been best sellers at Froelick Gallery in Portland for decades. Prochaska was born in Chicago in 1945 and received his MFA from Pratt Institute in 1970. He taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art from 1988 until his retirement in 2012. He exhibited extensively throughout the United States and the world, including a summer 2023 retrospective at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem, titled Music for Ghosts. A celebration of Tom Prochaska’s life takes place Saturday, April 11, 5 pm at Froelick Gallery, and the gallery will hold an exhibition surveying his career, on view April 1 to May 2. froelickgallery.com