From the artist
The Creatures of Saskatchewan and Manitoba from Marcel Dzama
Some of Marcel Dzama's creations are animals, some are humans and some are hybrids. He paints scary looking trees with legs, sinister boy scouts and clumsy looking bears. Pictured here are his birds with human heads, an octopus wearing a top hat, an owl riding a greyhound and a snake with horns – what sort of world do these animals come from? Why do his goofy teeth bats look so shifty? Dzama doesn't explain. But the more you look, the more you see, even though his watercolours are brown, brown and brown. He gets his famous brown tones by using bottled root beer concentrate.
"I fell into this style of drawing after my house burned down (in 1996)," Dzama says. "I lived in a small hotel room, so there was no room for easel storage. I started using hotel stationery and the backs of placemats because it was easy to store." As well as drawings and paintings, Dzama makes films starring life-sized costume sculptures of his characters. A recent exhibition in England showed Dzama's fantastical costume drama where a tree or crocodile-headed figure has morphed into a human. Both his drawings and films look quite innocent at first glance. The pieces seem old fashioned – or even like ancient Egyptian art – but something about them tells us they are from our present day world.
By Sophie Woolley
The Creatures of Fosston Saskatchewan