Irwin Touster, was a storyteller. The truth and facts in a story were less important to him then how the story flowed when told. In his mind, facts and memories could, and would, often be tweaked to make the story more interesting, and to keep the listener's attention. As an artist, my father did a similar thing. He might do a sketch at the edge of his pond, rendered exactly how that pond looked. But rarely would the finished canvas have that pond pictured like it had been sketched. Instead it might be presented as an idyllic swimming hole, where beautiful nude figures would be frolicking in a country paradise, surrounded by exotic birds, mountains, and waterfalls. It certainly made for a better story that way.
A prolific artist, my dad had spent his entire life creating art, with the vast majority of the work never being seen or exhibited in his lifetime. He was a painter, sculptor, ceramicist, cartoonist, illustrator, printmaker, writer, and man of ideas, who was influenced and inspired by the great masters, yet his work was uniquely personal and original.
Dad was a lifetime New Yorker. He was born in Brooklyn in 1921, and after serving in the army, moved to Manhattan, where he got married and raised two sons. After separating in 1962, my father moved into a rent-controlled apartment on West 87th Street, turning the living and dining rooms into his painting and sculpting studio. He lived and worked in that apartment for the next 56 years.
In 1970, he purchased a four-acre piece of property in Mt. Tremper, NY, eight miles down the road from the town of Woodstock. The property included a house, barn, swimming pond and stream, and every summer he lived and painted in the hayloft of that large yellow barn. In the fall he would return to NYC where he would continue to paint, draw and write, while working as Chairman of the Department of Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design.
My father was a man of habit and routine. He spent most of his time by himself, and he created visual art well into his late eighties. Once his hands got shaky, and painting and drawing became difficult, he gave up his summers in Woodstock, and turned to writing full time, churning out nine books of fiction, non-fiction, autobiography, biography, and catalogs of his work.
Irwin Touster's life’s work was stored in his barn in Woodstock when he died in 2017, at the age of 95.
After his death, I took it upon myself to document this huge, mostly unseen collection. Thousands upon thousands of works of art, including paintings up to 10 feet long were photographed and catalogued, and in so doing his history as an artist began to emerge. In the process I became my father's historian. As I coalesced his life's work of art, writings, and papers, I garnered even greater insight into who he was as an artist and a man, from a perspective other than as his son. Seeing all of the work together allowed me to interweave the various periods and mediums in which he worked, and to draw connections that would never have been made unless the collection was seen in its entirety. While doing so, I often wished that my dad had been with me to review the work, to share insights and stories about it and his process, and for him to see the breadth of what he had accomplished.
The work on this site is just a small sampling of what Irwin Touster, accomplished in his lifetime. I tried my best for the information contained here to be as factually accurate as possible, but since much of the information came solely from my father's story-telling and writings, I may be mistaken on a few of the facts.
After keeping most of his artworks to himself during his lifetime, I’d like to think my father would have been thrilled that his work has finally been brought down from the hayloft of his barn, and into the light of day.
– Joshua Touster 2020