This drawing of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa shows an unusual perspective, given it was done in 1866 and the land below is still undeveloped. The artist is Otto Reinhold Jacobi, who came to Montreal from Düsseldorf in 1860 and began a long artistic life in Canada (or what would officially be Canada a few years later in 1867).

Image: Drawing, watercolor over graphite, 25.3 x 38.1 cm, held in the Graphic Arts collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, here.

There are so many layers of meaning to Paul Morstad’s ultra-creative works. His drawings and paintings carry semi-fictional narratives built on natural science, mythology, musicology, rumours, hyperbole and folklore. (Above: Orphan Tsunami, 22 x 30″ Watercolour, 2022)

Slate Fine Art has announced Yellow Tiger Swallowtail, a new Morstad exhibition to run May 18 to June 10. His work occupies “the hinterland between tangled wilderness and tidy civilization . . . a semifictitious realm that is both water-bound and terrestrial,” Morstad explains.

“Sometimes based on legend or dreams or just a remnant of something overheard, my compositions are charts of a kind,” he says. “They map a purgatory inhabited by wandering nomads, tricky hobos, long-dead composers, defunct societies, distant relatives, extinct animals, forgotten deities, and mythical beasts who all reluctantly coexist somewhere between harmony and discord.”

His themes include “migration, encroachment, ecological decay, extirpation, and extinction,” Morstad says. “The media I use range from oil on panel, watercolour, pen and ink, and intaglio printmaking processes.”

Morstad explained this image on his Instagram when he posted this work a few weeks ago: “Klavdiya Shulzhenko was a Ukrainian 1930s/40s era singer who’s beautiful song, The Blue Head Scarf, which originally alluded to romantic love, was co-opted and rewritten as patriotic propaganda for the Russian war effort in WWII.”

Morstad also makes short, animated films with similar themes. His best known is Moon Man Newfie, composed and sung by Stompin’ Tom Connors, from the National Film Board of Canada. (How much more Canadian could that be?)

This Vimeo exploration of his art is definitely worth a watch., made during his 2021 exhibition at Galerie Youn.

Paul Morstad’s website, here.

His Instagram here.

His next exhibition, in Regina at Slate Fine Art Gallery, here.

Also represented by Galerie Youn in Montreal, here.

Also represented by Gallery Jones in Vancouver, here.

Note: Morstad broke ground while working for the National Film Board. Moon Man was the NFB’s second animated film using the revolutionary IMAX SANDDE digital system, which enables animators to draw and animate 3D images in space with a moving wand. (It is presented here in its 2D version).

Jonathan Monk’s Restaurant Drawings brings together more than 120 drawings on restaurant receipts, produced over the last year. Each receipt holds a hand-rendered artwork and is priced at the cost of the meal.

“The drawings offer a diaristic glimpse inside the daily life of the artist through the logging of his meals,” says Casey Kaplan, the New York gallery where Monk’s exhibition is on through July26, 2019. The well known British artist lives and works in Berlin.

The series began in 2015 when Monk and his family relocated temporarily from Berlin to Rome. As the family ate out, making themselves familiar with the new city, Monk began to collect the bills received from the restaurant meals. Once home, he would draw directly onto the receipts, a recurring practice that has continued to this day.

Jonathan Monk lives and works in Berlin. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including KINDL, Berlin (2019); Vox, Montreal, Canada (2017);  Palais de Tokyo, Paris and Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris (2008); and the 50th and 53rd Venice Biennales, Berlin Biennale (2001) and Taipei Biennial (2000).

Exhibition page at Casey Kaplan, here.

Image at top of post – L to R: Restaurant Drawing (Aeb a brilliant idea), 2019; Restaurant Drawing (Kruger I shop), 2018; Restaurant Drawing (Kelly White shape), 2019. Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York. Photo: Jason Wyche.

National Geographic and Tourism New Zealand sent Berlin-based artist Christoph Niemann to New Zealand to bring his experiences and impressions of the country alive through art.

Christoph Niemann is well known for his simple, witty illustrations that cleverly combine neat paint-like strokes with real-life objects, creating fun and whimsical scenes.

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An interview with the artist and his latest exhibition, here.