In 1997, Ostroverhy was awarded first prize at the New York City Museum’s ‘Firefighter’s Annual Art Show’ for his display of 300 portrait drawings of French firemen. He teaches Master classes in traditional, academic, figurative techniques to students in a Montparnasse studio, and maintains a website – www.ostroverhy.com – to publicize his art and career.
Ostroverhy has described The Fireman as ‘the world’s largest fireman in painting’ and has dedicated it to the firefighters of New York. Since the subject’s bare head is motionless and his muscular features rather grim (the mouth turns down at the corners and the eyes gaze straight ahead into the distance), a strong sense of monumentality, masculinity and toughness is communicated. Ostroverhy thinks the human face conveys ‘meaning’ through ‘a thousand expressions’; however, paradoxically, it is also ‘a mask, a mystery, made of rock, the face of a mountain. Eternal … the face of a hero’. It is, therefore, an appropriate image on which to conclude this book.