Finding the ‘Monster mind’ - We talked to the Canadian illustrator behind these haunted drawings
The first time we saw Nathan Robert Enkel’s work was when we stumbled across a fire hydrant with one of his signature monster faces on it. Enkel is a Toronto based Illustrator/Printmaker with one goal: to create monsters that inspire your imagination. His creations are all over Toronto in unorthodox places, in keeping with the philosophy behind his creations. He doesn’t limit his work to paper and canvas, expanding to also transform surfaces he sees that were just ‘way too mundane’.
We were curious to find out more about the man behind these haunted creatures so we decided to contact him and find out a little bit more about his work. We caught up with Nathan at his Toronto workshop and asked him what he intends to explore with his work and the use of monsters. He told us:
My work explores the beauty in brokenness in a place where the sacred and the mundane are inseparable from one and other.
This beauty is indeed striking when we look at Enkel’s work, he created a universe that is full of sacred religious iconography, playful references to video game characters and secret societies.
We asked him why the figure of the monster is of particular importance to his work, he told us with excitement:
Monsters! I have always been fascinated by them. Monsters have many different narratives in the adult story’s it is a destructive force, while in children’s literature it is more of an empowering creature/symbol. They often are a projection of the Child that is encountering the monster. Like in “Where the Wild Things Are” monsters can represent so many things, a task, a fear, a feeling, humankind, or some other power.
Enkel has an open mind when it comes to his audience’s reaction, hoping only that his work stirs up a bit of imagination and wonder:
As a reaction id like people to have when viewing it, I have no specific idea in mind. I hope they can feel some familiarity to it, that is evokes a feeling of a story, that it would cause the viewer to imagine where these creatures would exist and how they would interact and with whom.
Nathan just finished a show at the Rally gallery in Toronto called “no reason” and those pieces will be at Capital Espresso next month. Whatever the future holds for Enkel, his monsters and the universal wonder they evoke aren’t going away anytime soon.
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