For today’s blog post I have edited the last three posts to become my brand new bio, or as I have called it “autobio” for my about page. Please let me know if you have any thoughts!
As far back as I can remember I wanted to do or make funny things. As a kid I dabbled in drawing because I loved funny comic strips, when I was four, I told my parents I wanted to be a rich clown. Hilarious, right? I eventually thought about being a stand-up comedian, or an actor who specialized in comedy but I was painfully shy. The only thing I was ever ‘serious’ about was music, and in spite of the shyness, I did pursue that for a while after getting my BA in History.
Spoiler alert: while I really wanted to be a rock star, you will not be shocked to hear that I’m not one. But, I never won a lottery either. And fun fact, I never did a newspaper comic, but I do have a webcomic : www.gorillainthemidst.com. And I gotta say: it’s pretty damned funny, if I say so myself.
Once I realized that I was never going to be a rock star I knew I had to make a living so I worked as a graphic artist for a label printing company for eleven years. The best thing about the job was I often got to do design work and occasionally I got to draw cartoons. I remember being excited like a little kid the first time one of my cartoon drawings ended up on a printed label for a food product. I think it was a chicken or maybe a turkey. If you recall, cartoonist was on my list of childhood pipe dreams–er–ambitions.
The problem was, I had never practiced drawing enough to get really good. In 2005 I thought it would be a good idea to take a drawing course at the University of Manitoba School of Art. And I loved it! So the next year, I took a huge risk and quit my job to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
During my years at the U of Manitoba, I did editorial cartoons for the school paper and specialized in clunky, but funny cut-out animations. After graduating with a double major in Drawing and Video, I was accepted into the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Ottawa. Since my wife was working as a civil servant with Canada’s Federal Government, we were able to move across the country.
The MFA was a struggle for me because I don’t see myself as an ‘academic artist.’ I truly believe that art can be fun and entertaining and still engage with big ideas. That’s not to say it wasn’t rewarding. During the program I created a “musical/comedy/performance art” alter ego named Stan Dickie, as well as a concept–a sort of art movement of one called Stupidism that you can read about here.
I never got up the nerve to do Stand-Up Comedy, or any acting, but with Stan I brought those ambitions together. With my musical ability, my new found songwriting ability and cut-out animation I created a character that satirized men. Although I haven’t worked on it for while, I consider the project to be ongoing and have expanded the scope of the character to satirize whatever the hell I want.
A couple of years after I finished my MFA I started painting in oil. Somehow I always knew I’d end up being a painter and quickly realized it was the perfect fit for me. The first painting series I created was a series of strange things happening on the moon, loosely based on Stan Dickie’s (okay, it’s mine really) The Moon Song. I then did a series of Human/Animal Hybrids or chimeras. Both of these series were well received when shown publicly, but they did not become my obsession.
That happened one day when I was thinking about one of my favourite art exhibitions that I ever attended, the George Condo retrospective Mental States at the New Museum in New York. In 2018 I started to think about what I could do with a Condo inspired (but not copied) aesthetic. At that time I was moving in a kind of Neo-Pop Art direction using pop culture imagery as a starting point. I wasn’t particularly happy with everything I was doing at the time, so I thought: “what would happen if I painted characters from pop-culture in a Condo/Picasso (Condo is heavily influenced by Picasso) influenced style? So I did one. And then I did another and I haven’t been able to stop. So please peruse my website, sign up for my email newsletter, or just say “hi.”
Originally published on June 8th, 2021.