June 6 - August 31 2026

Yellowknife Visitor Centre Gallery

​

Artist Statement:
In my practice I am interested in connecting three ideas: “My Little Life,” “The Doings of Man,” and“The Great Mysteries.” When connected, these three ideas can lead to a fourth - “The Shape ofReality.” Put plainly, I want to thread the needle between what happens at home or at work with what happens in politics, in culture, and in the spirit realm – which I like to think of as the edge of the universe, the heart of an atom, or the mind of God. When stitched all together, a fuzzy picture of what it's like to be alive on planet Earth in our moment begins to come into focus. In one drawing, for example, I might depict Abu Ghraib, Boston Pizza, a workplace drama, the death of my brother-in-law, the plight of cartoon adventures, Ted Kaczynski, the movie American Splendor, the ubiquity of the oil industry, the CIA, cowboy boots, the nature of capitalism and the absurdity of
human meaning making.

 

The dominant tools of my practice are Koh-I-Noor technical pens and Noodlers Ink. I also use markers, pencil crayons and acrylic paint. I use double-sided tape to frankenstein my drawings together. Often, I add additional paper to a drawing to create more space so I can get everything important down.

​

My work is informed by the obsessive consumption of podcasts, YouTube videos, audiobooks and movies that critique power, as well as an ever-growing collection of fringe books containing artwork by the likes of Marc Bell, Yasushi Nirasawa, Adrian Smith, Joe Colman, Paul Laffoly and Alexander Heir. When composing my drawings I borrow rhizomatic thinking from Deleuze and Guattari who say that meaning is not set by rigid hierarchy but by the fluid relationships between things. I like to describe my drawings as looking like a cross section of a diagram of everything that has been exploded and put back together incorrectly.

​

Though I draw predominantly in black and white, the steps I took figuring out how to effectively incorporate color are clear in this body of work. You can see timid experimentation all the way to total commitment. Although I’ll never solve the incoherence of society, I’m thankful that through drawing, some things have become more clear.

 

Artist Biography:
Jonah Cutler (he/him/his) is a Canadian visual artist, curator and board member of the Yellowknife Artist Run Community Center. Jonah has lived in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories since 2000, after moving from Iqaluit where he was born in 1991. In 2018 Jonah received a Bachelor of Fine Art with distinction from The Alberta College of Art and Design. Jonah works predominantly with pen and ink on paper. He makes drawings in the tradition of outsider art and underground comix with a focus on social critique and commentary.