Bio
I was born in Alberta, Canada, but I grew up in Ontario. I’ve been making art since I could put crayons to paper. Toronto was my home base for most of my formative years and the cultural hub which fostered my skills in visual arts and music. It was also the international flavour of Toronto which sparked my desire to see more of the world. But my family’s cottage in Central Ontario has always been my spiritual home. It was there where I first connected with nature, imagination, and a special community of family and friends who remain a central part of my life today.
As a teenager, I completed the art immersion program at Central Technical School in Toronto. Working primarily on illustration, sneaking in to bars underage and playing harmonica, I had vague intentions to bomb graffiti at night and land a job pencilling for Marvel Comics by day. However, I ended up in Thunder Bay, Northern Ontario where I studied visual arts at Lakehead University. Aside from drawing, I began working seriously from life in oils.
Since university I’ve shown and sold many paintings, curated at a few galleries, worked at various jobs (brewing beer, making music, marketing, teaching) and I’ve travelled abroad a great deal, especially in East and Southeast Asia. In 2007/’08, I returned to Thunder Bay to upgrade to an Honours Bachelor of Fine Art at Lakehead and took a new direction working with digital animation, sound and video. The following summer, four of the digital shorts from my series, Everything Will Be Fine, were chosen to be screened at the reHAB Parkdale Film + Video Showcase in Toronto. And in painting news, I was very proud to have the commissioned portrait I did of my father installed in the permanent collection at Emmanuel College (Victoria University/UofT) in 2009.
I’m currently living in Tokyo, Japan and finishing my second year of independent study of a Masters in New Media program through the Transart Institute (with summer residencies in Berlin!). I was married in 2009 to Nao (nee Funatsu), and we had our first child, daughter Hana last summer! I continue to play with my band, The Rice Kings, who are the subject of a mockumentary project for my Masters thesis at Transart. Stay tuned…