I am a self taught artist. As a youth, art was my passion but there was no Joseph Campbell in my life encouraging me to 'follow my bliss'. I turned down entrance to the Ontario College of Art to spend 3 cold years in the Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba. Disillusioned with my bachelor's degree and a conflicted emotional life, I changed direction. I traveled East for 2 years across Europe, N. Africa, the Middle East, India and the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. I learned yoga, meditation and sketched the friends I made on my journey. Trekking alone I reached the glacier base camp of Mt Everest. I was happy and made the decision to be an artist but I was shy of academia. I headed home and West to the Kootenay Mt. and lived in relative isolation in an abandoned cabin next to Eagle Creek for 4 years. In spring the creek exploded with energy as boulders the size of the bears were rolled downstream by the force of the snow melt. Here I began the slow process of learning to paint by trial and error while earning a living as a tree planter.
A decade later I moved to Vancouver to live openly as a gay male. I discovered the new field of Art Therapy and was naturally drawn to it. Two years later I graduated from the Vancouver Art Therapy Institute in 1990. For the next 5 years I continued my painting and had a private practice working with abused children and adults suffering from HIV / AIDS. These two careers strongly influenced each other.
Recently I've made four return trips to Asia retracing and expanding on the journey of my youth. The high point was a trek in Tibet to the remote shore of a sacred lake called Namsto. Tibetan goat herders guided me to the ruins of a once proud monastery where later I took shelter from a storm alone in an ancient cave carved into the cliff face. While gale force winds roared outside I slept and dreamt of changes I needed to make. Once home I soon moved from Vancouver to the Sunshine Coast.
My art is now influenced by my study of Tibetan Buddhism. I find it as sane a mental framework to make sense of life as any Western psychology. Currently I strive to create images that express the dynamic between form and formlessness, the play of impermanence and time, and the connection between people when the 'self important' nature of the ego is stilled.
Posts
