Museum London is now home to Canadian artist Bertram Brooker's enigmatic art until April 3 in the exhibit It's Alive!

Known by his many different hats as Canada's first solo exhibitionist as an abstractionist, a master market and more, Brooker's exhibit features a mixed bag of his work.

He was born in England and settled in Winnipeg in the early twentieth century, where he was most active in the art world in the 1920s and 1930s.

Brooker often questioned God, universal truths and displayed those trains of thoughts through human figures in his early years as an artist. In one of his pieces, depicting the deposition of Christ, the figures appear hollowed out as though he sees them as robots. He was also interested in energy and was religious but not in an organized way, said Cassandra Getty, curator of art at Museum London.

"He was a difficult person to understand," she said.

The body's movement through time and space was also an influence on his work, as well as genetics as Darwin's theory was happening around Brooker's time. Brooker reflected these narratives in paintings involving plants and landscapes with human features that are not necessarily visible at first glance. By creating works like this, he was looking at aspects of reproduction and asking, "What makes something a tree and a human? Can you splice?" said Getty.

He also dabbled in writing, penning an arts critique column and mystery novels. His book Think of the Earth (1936) was the first to win a Governor General's award in fiction. His writing extended into manuscripts and movie scripts as well. There are claims that Brooker established the idea of the "close-up" in film.

"Brooker's work was edited in the way you'd edit a film, fades in, fades out," she said. This artist, while not mainstream, has developed somewhat of a cult status among artists and for Museum London to exhibit his work is a "rare opportunity," said Getty.

"You don't usually get (to see) his exhibits … he was known as a genius but not why he was," she said.

It's Alive! runs until April 3 at Museum London.