What do Drew Carey, Nicolas Cage and Jim Carrey have in common? No, not Lisa Marie Presley’s hoo-haw, but rather, they are all fans of artist Marcel Dzama. Dzama was schooled at the University of Manitoba and is a part of the Canadian art collective known as The Royal Art Lodge, a group who has met weekly since 1996 to create puppets, videos, dolls, musical performances, costumes, and drawings. We were reminded of how much we liked Dzama’s work when we saw the cover of the new Beck album. His work has also appeared on record covers for the Weakerthans and They Might Be Giants (both of whom we love by the way). Check out the artwork he did for them here and here.

He most often paints using water colors, though he uses acrylics as well. His palette is generally comprised of dull colors, and his work is almost always as bleak and cold as a long Canadian winter. And because the figures in his work have little context, they are free of inhibition. They float alone amidst washes of brown, part of which comes from using root beer in his paintings. He explains: “It seemed like an interesting idea, and when it turned out that it worked quite well as an ink, I started using other colors that would complement it.” McSweeney’s has also used quite a bit of his work, including the cover for Amy Fusselman’s “Pharmacist’s Mate.” McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers said this about Mr. Dzama: “Two per cent wit, ninety-eight per cent a fragile, fragile beauty — perfect alchemy.” Here are some of our favorite pieces:

– Family Tree, 2004
– Untitled, 2003
– I’d Rather Be a Forest than a Street, 2003
– Untitled, 1999
– Self-Portrait #5, 2004
– Untitled, 2003
– Untitled, 2004
– Untitled, 2003