Geoff McFetridge’s art is everywhere. It’s in movies, trains stations and even on your wrist

Geoff McFetridge has been called “the most famous Canadian artist you’ve probably never heard of.” As a graphic artist and painter, he’s collaborated with directors such as Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola, designed for brands like Apple and Pepsi, and created a huge mural for Ottawa’s transit system.

McFetridge is also the subject of a recent feature documentary, titled Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life, which traces his story from his suburban upbringing in Calgary to becoming one of the most prolific artists of his time.

In a wide-ranging interview with Q‘s Tom Power, McFetridge discusses how the DIY culture of skateboarding influenced him to get into art, how he landed a job doing art direction for Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal magazine and why he keeps one foot in the world of art galleries and one foot in the world of corporate design.

Listen to the full conversation on our podcast and follow along using this visual companion guide.

Beastie Boys’ magazine

One of McFetridge’s first jobs out of art school was working with Beastie Boys at the height of their popularity. In 1995, he landed a job as the art director for the hip-hop trio’s short-lived magazine, Grand Royal, which was edited by filmmaker Spike Jonze among others.

“They were the biggest band in the world,” says McFetridge. “I moved into their office and there was a lot going on. They recorded the album like one door over, you know. There’s all this Beastie Boys stuff going on. What I did was I moved out. I moved across the street and got my own studio … I didn’t want to be dealing with that, like the heaviness of that. I didn’t have the capacity. I wasn’t like, ‘I want to go on tour with the Beasties!’ I was like, ‘I just want to make stuff and contribute.’

“I’m a distance guy. Like, I want to learn from the Beastie Boys. And I felt like learning from the Beastie Boys was easier across the street, because within the confines of it, it was overwhelming.”

Painting

Eventually, McFetridge started his own studio and developed his own style. There’s a simplicity to the way he draws; his work says a lot with just a few shapes and colours.

“I’ve always felt like I had an ability,” he says. “I could draw really well … I think that there’s an aspect of, like, I’m making simpler and simpler images, but I’m growing the thing that I love, which is the thinking and the feeling — the concepts around it.”

McFetridge’s latest solo exhibit, Nature Mart, is on display now until Jan. 20 at Toronto’s Cooper Cole Gallery. Check out more photos from the exhibit here.

Brand collaborations

McFetridge’s clear visual language seems to work well commercially as he’s collaborated with numerous brands, such as Nike, Uniqlo and Hermès (you can find a list of his corporate design work here).

“I believe I can draw a simple image and it’ll hold my thoughts and my intentions,” the artist says. “We’re the most visually literate people that have ever been. Since birth, we’ve seen things that are like this highly-evolved visual culture that’s usually asking things of us. It’s usually asking us to decode it, to sell us something …  whatever it’s doing, it’s spelling it out for us.

“So I think that when I make this work, I’m within that culture and I’m speaking this language of our world, but in a weird way — with poetry … So I’m very careful about what I make my work about, because I believe in it, like I believe it’ll say something.”

Movies

McFetridge has worked on films like The Virgin Suicides and Being John Malkovich, but his biggest film job was Spike Jonze’s 2013 sci-fi romance Her. It’s about a man who falls in love with his virtual assistant, and McFetridge was responsible for designing the look and feel of every OS interface seen on screen.

“I went into that project being like, ‘I have no place doing this,'” he says. “But, at the same time, believing in my process, believing my ability to take on … this sort of impossible thing: imagining what interfaces will look like in the near-future … There are people who dedicate their entire careers to developing these things. But as a believer, I know I can fake it … because  there was a concept behind it, which for Spike was ‘the near future is nice.'”

Ottawa’s Lyon Station

Of all the projects he’s done, the one that really gets McFetridge emotional is a giant mural he created for one of Ottawa’s downtown transit stations. The mural, titled This Image Relies on Positive Thinking, represents a vision of contemporary life and vibrancy in a city.

“That’s something that people in my country are going to see every day,” says McFetridge. “Part of doing public art, which people might know, is that you sign a contract with your client, which was the transit system in Ottawa, that they will maintain and keep it for the life of the building. They have to take care of it. It has to be there forever.

“I was thinking about, like, how do you make things that last? Every day you think about how do I make this good? But then there are other factors that if it’s good or not, it’ll disappear. And I think everything disappears. But it is nice to build into the process something that says this will not disappear.”

The full interview with Geoff McFetridge is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Geoff McFetridge produced by Vanessa Greco.

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