This paraphrase of John Cage describes my art-life — an embodiment of necessity, craft and splayed interests. My documentarian-ness, my root writing, my conceptual drawings, my connect-the-dots skills, and wide-ranging oddities maps my bumpy life. Each bump becomes a springboard into ensuring “no regrets” from not having tried or given something new, my best shot.
I’ve been writing a book since 2023. It seemed a natural segway from my stint as an investigative journalist.
Book drafts don’t fill artist websites, but they also don’t present the same storage problem as unsold art. I burned pounds of old pages when I left Yukon, yet I took leftover paintings with me. I’m grateful to people who purchased some of my art panels, lightening my load as I moved south to another lake town.
I always wrote. I wrote in scuzzy bars. I wrote poetry. I took notes. I journalled. I documented everything, always and all ways. In 1988 I tasked myself with a photo-poetic ethnography of an odd collection of squatters near Whitehorse, Yukon.
