If there’s such a thing as a quintessential Plateau-Mile End artist, Nadia Moss surely qualifies.  Multi-talented, consistent, always interesting, she’s equally at home onstage behind the piano, as she is in the quite chaos of her Van Horne studio. A member of several local bands over the years, she’s regular fixture at the annual Expozine alternate press fair and has shown in a slew of artist-run galleries across Canada and the U.S. Her drawings have been published in magazines such as Walrus, Maisonneuve and Broken Pencils.

The Rover Art Fair is happy to catch Nadia at a moment that feels like one of those memorable turning points: she has a wonderful solo show at Galerie PUSH, in the Belgo Building, 372 St. Catherine West, #422, and is preparing for another at a Philadelphia Gallery in May. Her meticulous ink drawings on paper display mastery of technique and maturity vision, humour amid crisis, stories seemingly suspended on clouds. Not so long ago, any writer trying to sum up her visual world might have fallen back on clichés like playful and quirky. That’s no longer the case. The dark smudged faces wearing watery haloes strike poses of pursuit, escape, flight into disaster and away from solid ground. Her peopled landscapes stay true to their clownish origins, yet their worlds are anything but childish. Ms Moss – like her finally etched Canada geese – seems poised to fly. Nadia’s solo show can be seen at Galerie Push, 372 Ste. Catherine St. West, #425 or at www.galeriepush.com.

- Marianne Ackerman