Ryan Heshka
Heshka
(Canada, 1970)
Ryan Heshka was born in Manitoba, Canada in 1970 and he currently lives and works in Vancouver.
He studied architecture and took a degree in interior design, a field in which he worked for many years, along with that of animation, before making art and illustration his main activities. His works are influenced by the Golden Age of comic books (favorite artists include Jack Kirby, Bill Everett and Basil Wolverton), pulp magazines (Frank R. Paul), children’s books (Dr. Seuss), monster movies and B-movies (such as those of Ray Harryhausen, or films about King Kong e Dracula) and from old advertisements and vintage posters, all of which shaped his original artistic style.
Outside of pop culture, other influences include the natural world, industrial and architectural design, and fashion. During childhood, besides drawing, Heshka enjoyed making models of little cities, and he filmed them using the stop motion technique in Super 8 mm to create his own imaginary world.
His works have been featured in the most important annuals on illustration, including American Illustration, Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts, 3 x 3 and Applied Arts, and in Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Playboy, Esquire, Forbes, as well as by Topps and Dreamworks SKG. He has shown in galleries in North America and Europe, and his images have been published many times in the magazine BLAB! and in books on the Pop Surrealism movement, including The Upset: Young Contemporary Art by Robert Klanten and Beautiful Dreamers: Il nuovo sogno americano tra Lowbrow Art e Pop Surrealism, by Ivan Quaroni. In 2017 Cernunnos published his first monograph, titled Fatales: The Art of Ryan Heshka.
Heshka has also published the comic “Mean Girls Club” (2015), the graphic novel “Mean Girls Club: Pink Dawn” (2018), and the self-produced comics “Frog Wife” (2018) and “Pleasure Planet” (2021).
