For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by art and nature. Growing up in the Niagara region (Fenwick, Ontario), I was always surrounded by both. These two first loves have led me to pursue a wide variety of interests, including outdoor recreation, travel, music, landscape design and, of course, printmaking.

Ever since I made my first leaf-rubbing when I was six, I've been captivated by the process of creating prints. Shaped by my exposure to "art" through record-album covers and a non-stop obsession with doodling, I started printmaking in high school. I briefly apprenticed with muralist Heinz Gaugel, who operated a studio in a rooftop greenhouse, before enrolling at the University of Waterloo in 1989. In five years, I switched faculties four times -- but I eventually received an award for exceptional achievement in printmaking and worked for one term as a printmaking lab technician.

I lived in Whitehorse, Yukon, for some of 1994, where two mixed-media fish plates (collographs) were commissioned from me as part of commemorative celebrations for the Klondike Gold Rush. That same year, I began graduate studies at the University of Guelph.