Sez Me

Gary Taxali is a Toronto based artist and award winning illustrator who captures an alt zeitgeist that connects with the viewer on very elemental levels. He is also a thoroughly modern-day artist; his work finds it way into non-traditional channels including silk pocket squares designed for men’s retailer Harry Rosen and his album cover design and artwork for Aimee Mann’s 2009 @#%&*! Smilers which garnered a Grammy Award nomination. In 2012 Taxali was commissioned by the Royal Canadian Mint to create a series of six limited-edition 25-cent coins. 

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Taxali’s imagery is both startlingly original and a throwback to images associated with Depression-era media. His characters carry a natural and very human ambivalence, a combination of swagger, pathos, mirth and sadness. In Sez Me, the central figure of Bunty, rabbit eared cap drawn down over his eyes, is seen blithely strolling through a landscape of Taxali characters, oblivious, perhaps not, to the noise of life and nuance around him. Perhaps this is Taxlali’s not-so-obvious comment on the state of relationships with ourselves and with others.