Visual teacher Ryan Toth is a lot like his desk: busy. In one glance, you take in every color of paint bottles, boxes of charcoals, and the open drawer where “Den Mother,” the stuffed racoon in a pink frilly dress (and matching bonnet), sleeps. It’s the desk of a full-time teacher, prolific artist, and father of two young girls — not to mention avid hobbyist.

Mr. Toth, the youngest of five children, had to entertain himself often as a child. He also struggled with a speech impediment and had difficulty communicating with those around him. Equally important for him, he “daydreams a lot.”

“Art was a natural way of trying to escape and express myself in ways that I wasn’t able to before,” Mr. Toth said.

Art surrounds Mr. Toth. His classroom walls are covered in murals (including an artsy parody of “Hamlet,” “2D or not 2D”), tribal masks, skeletons, and even a former Spirit Week tombstone costume with his name and the epitaph, “I hope admin approves my leave.” The room even smells like paint.

“As an artist, I know it takes a lot of work,” Mr. Toth said. “I know that you have to find time for yourself. You have to carve it out because you’re never just going to get extra time. I know that it’s a job in itself to make that time, but you have to do it, you have to be all in. And that’s what I tell myself every day.”

After attending high school at then Palm Beach County School of the Arts and witnessing the school transform into Dreyfoos, Mr. Toth received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper Union in New York City. Throughout his education, he picked up interests and hobbies that would one day become job opportunities: comic drawings, gameboard design, toy design, and more. All the while, he was painting and sketching.

In 2001, Mr. Toth was a senior in college living a few blocks away from ground zero. After the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, his apartment was blocked off and used as a temporary morgue. He had to prepare for his senior showcase while displaced and find a job at a time when he said artists “weren’t really sure if we should be making our work.” Some of Mr. Toth’s paintings reflect this period of darkness and uncertainty, a connection that he encourages in his students as well.

“This is what I tell them, how personal experiences can influence your work, so I show them my own work and then how they can integrate it,” Mr. Toth said. “My job as a teacher, specifically in the art department, is to teach them how to take their artwork, ask a question, and put their own voice into it, so they can start making a body of work that’s reflective of who they are, what they want, and what they hope to become.”

In order to support himself at the time, Mr. Toth followed his hobbies. For instance, his passion for cartoon comic drawing (and membership in what he described as a “comic nerd club”) led him to work freelance at Marvel Comics for two years.

Ironically, he said he always found science museums more interesting than art ones, an interest that culminated in his working at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in the education department. While at the AMNH, Mr. Toth learned fabrication, meaning the construction or assembly of replicas, models, and exhibits of natural phenomena — a skill he used to start the Nature Lab collection on campus while working as an artist-in-residence in 2008.

“Without even having a degree or being qualified for it, I just took my passions that I had built over the years and had carried with me, and I applied those to these jobs, and I got them,” Mr. Toth said, wearing his Nature Lab T-shirt. “These were things that I didn’t just push off to the side. I never said, ‘I’m just a painter, so I’m not doing that anymore.’ That helped me to literally feed myself and be able to live for several years.”

Digital dean Melissa Glosmanova and her friends were two grade levels below Mr. Toth in school when he and his friends invited them to a local figure drawing class. Mrs. Glosmanova said that class “solidified their friendship,” and the two stayed in contact throughout college in New York City and even spent time as artists-in-residence together from 2008 through 2012.

“He’s just a really generous person,” Mrs. Glosmanova said. “I know he’s that way with his students, but as a colleague, you really hope that you work with people like that.”

After Mr. Toth moved to New Jersey with his family, Mrs. Glosmanova stayed on as a teacher and eventually was able to call Mr. Toth and inform him of a full-time job opening in the art department. She said she feels the two of them are like “boomerangs,” thrown out into the world, but always coming back.

“I always find him very inspirational because I don’t have children, and I don’t have as much on my plate, and I always think I don’t have enough time,” Mrs. Glasmanova said. “But I’m like, ‘Man, if Toth can do it, I guess we all probably could.’ We just have to make it happen.”

Mr. Toth teaches Figure Drawing, AP Drawing, and a freshman art class. Students may know him for always having a dad joke on hand, playing his tunes over the speaker, or for his original Halloween costumes. One afternoon in his freshman art class, he approached a student with a handful of skittles and asked her favorite flavor. When she answered green, he popped the green one in his mouth and handed her the rest. The entire table just laughed.

“He’s amazing at making us really push ourselves to the limit and making us better artists,” visual freshman Sarah Conway said. “Especially freshman year, which is our bootcamp year, he really teaches us how to think and how to time manage. And his loving father nature just makes class even more fun.”

Visual freshman Rachel Lipnitzky recalled a micron pen drawing assignment when they couldn’t use pencil, so they had to “go for it and really focus on the line.” This is intentional —  Mr. Toth said his goal is to get students to the point where “they can be confident enough to take risks and make mistakes and be willing to do it again and again so they can learn.”

“I think it’s common to have somebody else see what you’re capable of before you can see it yourself,” Mr. Toth said. “You just need somebody pushing.”

He describes his own art style as “cynical whimsy.” Many of his recent works feature Florida animals, bright colors and tropical patterns, and almost always a state of battle. An eight foot tall sculpture titled “Get Off My Lawn” features a python strangling an alligator that’s chomping into an arm. The arm holds a pinwheel puncturing the python. All of the characters are in their final moments above a kiddie-pool and plastic flamingo base. Another piece is titled the “Ball Pit of Death.”

“I tell them being an artist is actually a gift because it’s our way to express how we feel without having to say anything,” Mr. Toth said. “
It goes back to being a wee toddler that can’t communicate and talk well. I think I can do that now and say a lot without actually saying anything. I can say it through my work.”

This story was originally published on The Muse on March 4, 2026.