Given his intense touring schedule as the drummer in rock band Metz, visual artist Hayden Menzies wasn’t sure he could make it down in person for his own art show at Toronto’s Hashtag Gallery recently. Luckily he did.

Menzies’ art, musically, is associated with band T-shirts, gig posters and album singles, though his work long predates Metz. The gallery show O.T.Rx is a collection of large-scale, multimedia artwork and is his first one in five years.

“People [who attended the show] were very nice,” he says,  adding that he was surprised most of his work sold.

Although some fans may find links between the music and art, Menzies, a Toronto native, looks at the creation processes of the two as different, with some similarities.

“If an idea is working, you run with it, and sometimes things come together very quickly,” he says, adding, “Other times it’s a long process of trial and error.”

Distorted shapes and abstraction of human anatomy are part of the bizarre density of images in Menzies’ art. Stream of consciousness comes to mind as well as the succinct nature of poetry.

“I like some of the process and struggle to be seen in the final work,” he says. “Sometimes the most successful, essential parts of a painting or drawing are the small things that weren’t planned and somehow tie everything together.”

When it comes to keeping from being stagnant in terms of creativity, Menzies thinks stagnant can mean different things at different times. Staying focussed and taking risks doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not moving forward.

Menzies talks about the importance of keeping from being stagnant by just staying busy and focused with some risks in the work. 

“It doesn’t have to be a complete change in direction, visually or process wise,” he says. 

Metz is a Toronto band with two albums out on the revered Sub Pop record label, including their self-titled debut, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Polaris Music Prize.

Check out a sampling of Menzies’ work on his Tumblr page.