En Masse Mural

A Drawing major with a BFA honors from the Alberta College of Art and Design (Calgary), Botkin a pusher of charcoal, ink, and paint across many surfaces far and wide. Based out of Montreal, he has been involved in the creation of over 200 murals internationally as the co-founder and director of the EN MASSE project , and pursues his personal work through solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada, the United States and Europe. Artistic Statement: Working always in black and white, EN MASSE is a multi-artist collaborative drawing initiative that through a layered game of visual cross-reference, encourages the recall and development of personal and collective narratives within artists from very diverse artistic backgrounds. Drawing on an ever-expanding global network of visual artists involved in graffiti, comics, illustration, tattoo and street arts (to name a few), this graphically powerful study in pop-surrealism explores how we can both test and transcend deeply ingrained and often flawed social identities and realities, in order to broaden and solidify our own artistic communities. This practice is fundamentally an exploration of artistic identity, where individual authorship is cast aside for the creation of a collective vision, greater than any one could create on one’s own, through the act of communication.

The content and flavour of the En Masse wall was spontaneously defined by by the many artists that participated in the creation of this work over the course of a week in production. Most of the artists, both emerging and professional, were coming from the ‘underground’ or ‘lowbrow’ arts (ie comics, graffiti, tattoo and street art communities). There were many elements within the work that made specific reference to the Edmonton Radial Railway Society in general, forming key components to the composition of the mural.