What is your artwork about?

In the most simple terms possible, my recent artwork is about moving through the California landscape, driving around on the freeways in Los Angeles. Among other things, it is also about how I experience life, and the difficulty we all have in expressing ourselves to other people. I think alot about how my eyes work and how my brain interprets the information my eyes collect. In that sense, my art is really a celebration of looking, and how grateful I am to be healthy and alive!

What led you to make these kinds of artworks?

On Tuesday, March 27, 2001, I found myself stuck in rush hour traffic, after having spent the day at the beach. I pulled out my sketchbook and began to doodle mindlessly, without looking at the page while I was drawing. After a short time, it occurred to me to draw what was in front of me. And so I drew the car ahead, the trees over hanging the freeway, the buildings in the distance, the markings on the pavement... When I finally got home and had a chance to examine what I had done, I knew immediately that this was an important development.

Describe the process involved in making your artwork.

I begin by getting in my car and going for a drive. Sometimes I make drawings while I drive, and other times I just drive and make a mental picture of the road. When I draw while I drive, I put a piece of paper on the passenger seat and draw the most interesting features and details that appear as I'm moving through the landscape. I've become quite adept at drawing without needing to look at the paper, so this isn't nearly as dangerous as it may appear.

Then I go back to my studio and I make a painting based on this driving experience. I have made a couple paintings while driving, but I've found it very awkward -as well as very messy- to mix oil paint on a palette balanced on my lap. Until I figure out a better way to do it I've decided to paint in my studio. Anyway, I usually make a few quick marks on the canvas or linen, and then begin filling in color. I prefer to leave as much canvas exposed as possible.

How do you know when you are done?

I know I'm done when I sense that another dap of paint or pencil mark would ruin the work: That the surface just can't hold any more. Some paintings can hold a tremendous amount of color and others not so much. It all depends on the first few brushstrokes. Sometimes I know right away that this is an artwork that is going to plague me, really take a long time to resolve.

I'm getting better at understanding that moment when the painting is full. That's a threshold that a painter can only determine after having crossed over it enough times, after having ruined countless canvases! But that's perhaps the most exciting part of the whole process, when I begin to sense that I'm approaching the brink.

Which artists have had the greatest influence on you?

My early influences were Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Paolo Uccello, Botticelli and Bernini, among other Renaissance and Baroque artists. They taught me that Art was the highest accomplishment possible for a human being, a belief I hold true today. At the same time I read a lot of comic books, and learned a lot about drawing from Joe Kubert's G.I. Combat , Frank Miller's Daredevil , Herge's Tin-TIn , and even Mad Magazine.

Years later, I became enthralled with the early Pop paintings of Roy Lichtenstein, not because of the comic book motifs, but because for me they are largely about the joy of paint and the language of painting. I also gravitated to art that expressed a sense of humor, however melancholy or dark: from William Hogarth and Baltus to Yves Klein, William Wegman, Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy, Dieter Roth and Martin Kippenberger.

While I was a Graduate student at Art Center in California, I focused my interests on early modernist painting, from Cezanne and Van Gogh to the Cubists, the Futurists and Kandinsky, Henri Matisse and the early Fauves painters. I was also very much into all things gestural and graphic, such as Mark Tobey, Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombly, Philip Guston and Brice Marden.

What is 'Canadian' about your art?   You were born and raised in Calgary, what role has this city played in your development?

I might be too close to my own work to notice anything particularly 'Canadian' about my own artwork, if there can even be said to be such a thing. However, I have been looking closely at the paintings of the Group of Seven, Tom Thomson, and Emily Carr quite a bit recently. Being away from home, and growing older has changed my thoughts about their artwork. I used to dispise Canadian artists who painted the landscape, because it seemed absurdly obvious. But I was young and naive. I've learned that it is usually those things directly in front of our eyes that we have the greatest trouble seeing.

Since I've been focused primarily on landscapes for the past couple years, I have found Canadian Art to be a great resource. I could be wrong but seems to me that the Group of Seven was the last great Art movement (if it can be said to be a movement) that devoted the majority of its attention to the landscape. For the remainder of the 20th Century the landscape was mostly ignored because I suppose it seems bourgeois to paint the 'countryside', or ignorant of the mechanical-digital culture that emerged post WWl. This is particularly evident in America and Europe, where I can't think off-hand of any contemporary painters dealing with landscape.

My own observations lead to me to believe that Canadians have a greater awareness and appreciation of the landscape than most Western cultures, probably because we have so much of it! Growing up in Calgary, with the Rocky Mountains under an hour's drive away west, Drumheller and the Badlands to the northeast, and the the prairies all around, the landscape is omnipresent. I suppose therefore it doesn't seem at all unusual for me to be interested in the landscape itself as a subject. Above anything else, I would say that that awareness of the landscape constitutes the 'Canadian' within my artwork.

Tell us about the artwork included in your new book, Driving Drawings and Paintings [November 2006].

The artworks in the book represent a critical point in my career as an artist. Every single drawing and painting I've included was a breakthrough, part of a giant epiphany that I had.

What was that breakthrough?

It was the coming together of my ideas and my abilities. For a long time I felt like I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn't know how to do it. For instance, a person can have a whole novel in their head, but if they don't know how to spell, well, writing that book is going to be very frustrating... So I had to develop my own language to be able to give shape to my thoughts. Once I had figured out how to paint in my own way, it allowed me get very ambitious with my ideas.

As a teacher of art, what advice do you have for young people interested in becoming an artist?

All I can do is to speak from my own experience. I have always made great strides forward when I was rigorously honest with myself about what I wanted to do. I've never held back when it has come to my artistic practice. I've worked with nearly every medium and material an artist can employ, putting my ideas through every workout imaginable. Of course I've fallen flat on my face many times! it hasn't always been the easiest path to follow because there isn't anyone ahead of me leading the way.

But I've never seen those adventures as being wastes of my time; each occassion has been an invaluable learning experience. I honestly see 'mistakes' as great opportunities, opportunities to move in a direction that was previously unknown or unthinkable. Seriously, I'm afraid of NOT taking creative risks.