I remember the day I was supposed to begin kindergarten in 1975. Pulling up to the school, I was overcome with fear and began pretending to vomit onto the floor under the dash. My mother drove me home and didn't force me to return for that whole year. Like many people in Tillsonburg, my mother worked on a tobacco farm. I spent the year sitting on a table next to her drawing on the huge sheets of paper she used to wrap the leaves. My family history reveals not a single artist, I believe I created the ability in me that year.
I was born in Tillsonburg, Ontario in 1970. Tillsonburg was a fairly small town and I usually had to find ways to entertain myself. Other early memories of doing pictures include me sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, with the TV on and drawing there. My family was not that well off so to get free paper from my aunt's tobacco farm was great and helped supply me endlessly. I think that the huge roll of brown paper was quite liberating for me and made me feel I could draw anything. Early pictures were of TV personalities and rock stars... a particular theme involving me drawn in with these people was common; as the fifth member of Kiss or myself on Gilligian's Island. As a child my imagination and fib-telling was a constant source of amusement.
My next phase in making pictures (in my teens) had me also using popular culture figures, Spiderman, Lou Reed, Darth Vadar…but in a more moral/political context always using text and having what I thought at the time to be subtle or witty commentary.
The next few years I was very much into playing music and performing, I formed several groups (I played guitar). But once I moved away from Tillsonburg and to Toronto I formed People From Earth with John Tielli, the main songwriter. This group was together for six years and we had a small record contract and put out two albums (I did the art work for the second). I also spent my years after high school as a factory worker, waiter and studied film. It was at this point I re connected with making pictures... very suddenly one day in the back room of the house I shared. I remember building up skills using different materials, I had invented a technique with crayons, water and ink...and did a picture of a sheep on a big piece of paper, made the page into sections and did three or four more pictures of sheep in different poses, then connecting the sections with colour, balancing it making it happen....I was ecstatic, I made more pictures, I would use anything to paint on, I would use anything to paint with. The animal brought me to the picture, I couldn't stop I was addicted. I remember a feeling of justification, no one had to like my pictures, I loved them, I hadn't felt that way about anything before. I would be making them even if I never showed anyone. It turned out to be my way out of the factory job, the waiter job...it was the first real approval of my life.
