Allow me to introduce myself...

This is my very first post here, and hopefully I'll be able to keep you entertained with some of the tattoos, artwork and stories that happen in my life.

First off, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to check out my work. It's truly a blessing to be able to do what I do, and make a living from it!

I am an artist, born and raised in North Western Ontario Canada, in a tiny town called Geraldton. Population, 1,800. With such limited extracurricular activities while growing up here, you're pretty much faced with this dilemma; play hockey, learn an instrument, draw, or hunt moose. 2 of which weren't my bag baby! I played hockey (goalie) for maybe a year or two when I was 11 and 12. I hung up the skates and entered early retirement from the hockey game, after blowing out a nut while trying to make a save. The team won! (The other team that is) It was around that time, in which I took up the drums, and started drawing. No moose yodelling for this Northern bush boy. Pops was sad. He lost his son to the paint brush! :( Jokes of course. My folks were ALWAYS supportive of my decisions, except for when I got hooked to huffing WhiteOut back in 1988. Those were crazy times.

Where was I? oh yah... WhiteOut... XD - Anyway, uhm, oh yah... So I stuck with the drumming and art, and have been in many different bands throughout my life. I took art all throughout high school, and owe my techniques and sense of detail to my high school art teacher, Johnny Arts. No joke, that's his name!

All said and done, I completed high school, and moved to Welland, Ontario, where I took Broadcasting - Radio, Television and Film at Niagara College. I wanted to do something in the artsy field, and have always liked the idea of making movies. However, this was DEFINITELY not in the cards for me. As a matter of fact that card in the deck, must have had a manufacturing defect. Did I struggle? THAT'S an understatement! Upon arriving at college, I immediately felt out of place. I could not meet anyone. I was awkward. I was shy. That's when I started getting these odd feelings. I chalked it up to living in a humid environment, and thought I was experiencing asthma. I would get these bouts of hyperventilation, that would last momentarily, but wouldn't necessarily bother me to an extent of concern. Then one night, I was lying in bed, and all of a sudden BAM, my heart started pounding a thousand miles an hour, and impending doom shat down upon the top of my head. I thought I was having a heart attack! I had ZERO idea what was going on. This was back in 1996, and anxiety disorder and/or panic attacks weren't really discussed much, and the internet was in its infancy, and at this time, I don't even think I had ever been online before. Not to mention, knowing if Google's Symptom Checker Diagnosis was even invented yet... or even Google, for that matter.

I wound up quitting college and moved back home to Geraldton.

I started getting bouts of panic and anxiety attacks upon moving back home. I was physically, and emotionally drained. I think it was the stress from being away from home for the first time, and not really having anyone close to me around the area, that caused the anxiety. The panic and anxiousness built up quite a bit, and I was forced to seek help for my issues. The anxiety disorder I developed has been with me ever since, but I have learned to cope with it, with cognitive behavioural therapy and antidepressant medication. Such is life. Living with panic is such a debilitating illness. It's downright scary to suffer through those dark times. I found that keeping myself occupied with art and music, greatly reduced those negative thoughts. So this is when I started to really try and keep my mind busy.

During the winter of 1997, I hooked up with a couple of my buddies from town who I started jamming out with. We formed a funk/metal band, in which we called Fuss. The singer and I got ourselves a job as stock boys at the local department store, where I met my wife Maureen. We've been together for over 19 years. Our vocalist moved to Mississauga, Ontario to go to college, so our guitarist and myself moved there with him. We tried to make it on the music scene while living there, and had a few gigs we played around Toronto. After about a year, my girlfriend (Maureen) moved there with us, eventually her and I got our own place. The music didn't work out for us, and we parted ways. Maureen and I moved BACK to Geraldton, and I got work at a couple local restaurants as a cook.

At this time, I had pretty much put drumming on the back burner, and focussed my attention to drawing and painting. I was actually selling some of my early pieces on eBay, and was making a decent side job out of it. I was, what you'd call a semi-starving artist. I think it was moving back home and not knowing what I really wanted to DO with my life, when I got the thought of "hmmm how can I make money... GOOD MONEY, with my art"? When I started thinking about trying out tattooing. It was 2002 and there were tattoo magazines in every corner store I went to, but it wasn't as main-stream as it is now. So, I figured that I should at least try it out. Maybe make some bucks on the side, and save up enough money to go to college or university for art, and become an art teacher. That was the plan.

This is where I am going to reallllly crunch this story down, because I can literally write a full length autobiography on my life from this point to where I'm at now. After all this IS my 'Tattoo' page, so yah, I stuck with it, and didn't become a pissy art teacher.

I got into tattooing and practised for a few months on honeydew melons, and did my very first tattoo on my wife! I'll have to upload the video of me doing it on here some day! It's pretty funny. After 10 months of tattooing, I received a phone call from a tattoo studio in Thunder Bay, Ontario, offering me a full-time job, as they had seen some of the work that had come into their shop, that I had done. I worked there for about a year, and unfortunately had a falling out with a co-worker (We're cool now), and moved BACK to Geraldton, where I tattooed for 2 years before heading out to Alberta with my girlfriend Maureen. We opened up a shop in Hinton, Alberta, and named it Drowning In Ink. It was here, where we had our first and only child, Dexter. He was born in 2007.

It was around this time, when I was offered a job at an EXTREMELY high traffic shop in West Edmonton Mall. We moved to Edmonton, and I worked there for about a year. We met some life long friends in Edmonton. Was an AWESOME shop to work at.

In the end, we wound up moving BACK home to Geraldton so we could be closer to our friends and family. We bought a house, and opened up a shop in our home, where we currently reside. I married Maureen on May 7th 2017. It only took me 18 years to pop the question. Oh well, I never was quick at jumping into things. But I'm glad I did. I couldn't be more happier. I'm living the dream of being pretty much retired ( I can honestly say that this doesn't feel like work to me). I am truly blessed to be doing something I love, and working in our home with a wonderful loving family.

Thanks for your time, and I hope you stick around and come back again. My plans are to share my current tattoo designs, and stories that coincide with them, as well as art projects, and everything else in between. See ya soon!