Serena Malyon

A little snippet of a project I’m working on.

Here are some small illustrations I did as gifts for Geoff Rogers and Dave Bohati of MARKET.

This commission goes way back to July (Here’s the in-progress post). There was a big delay where the piece couldn’t move forward, but its finally done! So this illustration accompanies Richard Siken’s “Snow and Dirty Rain”, a beautiful poem about the lifecycle of a relationship. It was a very challenging piece to compose, but I’m very happy with it.

Earlier this month, Nathan Swayze and I completed the installation of my “vegetable anatomy” installation at MARKET calgary, an awesome new restaurant on 17th Ave. It was lots of work, but we received a lot of support from McKinley Burkart, Vanessa Salopek (the owner), Yvan Toulouse (the manager), and the whole kitchen staff. The chefs working there were great company and even let us sample some amazing dishes!

photo credit: @chefbohati

Me and Nathan Swayze, who helped design and install the mural. I couldn’t have done it without his talent, hard work and construction experience. Check out his work here.

The full ceiling mural design, complete with bulkhead wrap.

Wall mural design.

Here’s the part where I gush about how awesome the food is. So apparently the executive chef Geoff Rogers is on this season of Top Chef Canada. From the few dishes I tasted, its no wonder he’s on the show, each dish is beautifully crafted by him and the other wonderful chefs. Not only is the food amazing, but they make pretty much everything IN the restaurant. They make their own cheese, soy sauce, sausage, bread, pop, butcher their own meat, grow their own herbs, etc. etc. And what’s more, its affordable gourmet food! So go check it out and support these guys, they work extremely hard for their craft.

The past few days Nathan Swayze has been helping me install some murals at MARKET, a new restaurant opening on 17th Ave. Working with the interior design firm McKinley Burkart, I designed a couple of murals for this place, all based on the concept of “vegetable anatomy”.

Painting on the ceiling presents its own challenges, such as trying to keep control of your hand when you’ve been holding it up for 12 hours. Or avoiding rolling off the scaffold when you’re lying on it.

It’s been challenging, but we’ve gotten some great feedback.

One perk of being there late into the night is that we got a chance to meet the Executive Chef Geoff Rogers and the Chef de Cuisine Dave Bohati. They’re two award winning chefs who are really excited about getting to cook affordable, local, gourmet food. The more I hear about MARKET, the more intrigued I become. Check it out on their Facebook, they explain it much better than I do.

Recently I was approached by the interior design firm McKinley Burkart to do a mural for a new restaurant called MARKET. From what I’ve seen the food is going to be amazing, and it’s all locally sourced.

So for the past few weeks I’ve been researching and drawing “vegetable anatomy”. Here’s a little taste:

I’ll write a little more when Nathan and I start painting.

December’s finally here, so here’s my Christmas card.

My lastest illustration. Even though it was started before I went to England and Ireland, a lot of the outcome was inspired by what I saw on my trip. I loved the countryside of Ireland, the rugged boggy landscape interspersed with green fields and trees climbing with ivy. And in England I spent everyday in museums, staring in awe at masterpiece after masterpiece learning a lot. I’ll have more to show soon!

Fall doesn’t last very long in Calgary, so I figured I’d paint it while I could. Its just a little doodle, but I loved the colours in it. This might be it for a while, I’m going to England and Ireland for two weeks and I won’t have any means of uploading my sketches. Once I get back I’ll upload some of them as well as some projects I’m working on.

This illustration is for a poster for the CSIF’s Canadian Indigenous Shorts event. They’re showing some great independent films, check it out on October 19th at the CSIF.