Winnipeg has the largest collection of Inuit art in the world, I believe. They can be quite simple in a great way and often have sparse backgrounds and isolated characters. They often have a really great look to them.

I wouldn't consider myself an outsider artist because I have a university degree in painting.

After finishing art school I was applying to stores like Home Depot and Walmart. You know, places where you have to take a urine test before you get your minimum wage. Even those places wouldn't hire me. So I was lucky when I got included in a group show at the Richard Heller gallery that kind of started my art career.

When I was a school kid I used to read lots of comics. This started me on drawing, I would make my own comics about my teddy bear whose name happened to be Ted.

My favorite artists from comics were early ones like Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko who had a real heavy ink style. Captain America, co created by Jack Kirby, was a favorite of mine and I sometimes use an altered version of his costume on some of my characters.

Yoko Ono is someone who's music I've discovered more recently. The current cd rereleases of her albums all had bonus tracks recorded just with a tape recorder and I'm really into these at the moment because they have a great intimate feel.

I use dull colors in my drawings because I started out using a root beer base because it seemed like an interesting idea and when it turned out that it worked quite well as an ink I started using other colors that would compliment it.