Royal Canadian Mint Celebration Coins

In 2011 artist Gary Taxali was approached to create the artwork for six celebration-themed coins for The Royal Canadian Mint. The 25 cent coins that he designed have now been minted and five of them are now available to purchase at the Royal Canadian Mint website.

I have been very fortunate in my art career so far to have worked on many exciting and meaningful projects. This past year, I began a project which is not only of such nature, it is without a doubt the most important art project of my career so far. I was contacted by a very kind and enthusiastic ad agency Art Director named Dave Tupper at Young and Rubicam in Toronto, who sent me an email stating he was a big fan of my work. Dave then asked me in a very straight-ahead, no-nonsense kind of way if I would be interested in doing….get this, a coin for The Royal Canadian Mint. (!!!!)…

I was given the themes of “Wedding”, “New Baby”, “Tooth Fairy”, “Birthday”, “O’ Canada” and “Holiday”. I jumped in head first and started sketching. Dave told me that I had to consider the “engraving” and so creating designs that would translate graphically to that process was important.