Many people reject Dmytro's paintings when first looking at them, seeing them as naive or ignorant and uneducated.
His homeland and it's history, his language and his people have a profound affect on his work. As a young man his poems on Ukrainian historical themes made him popular.
He left school when he was ten years old, joined a group something like the Boy Scouts, called Sokoly (The Falcons); an organization that seemed to have military overtones.
During a period of time when Dmytro was in an army, and at war, he said he was selected out of his troop because of his sharpness of observation then sent to an intelligence training school. It was these that he was taught to record rapidly the faces of suspicious people, an important feature that was essential was the subjects eyes.
He left Ukraine in 1923, making his way to Saskatchewan. In 1926 he joined the Canadian National Railway, making his home in Hafford, Sask for thirty five years. For thirty-eight years he worked for the Canadian National Railway, a job he disliked.
During h is time on the railway Stryjek made small pencil and ink portraits, it wasn't until he retired that he began to create the paintings for which he is best known.
Dmytro Stryjek died in 1991 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
