Artist Bio

I was born on November 21st, 1984 in a hospital in Vancouver, Canada. I grew up in a small house in East Vancouver next to a cemetery. It was in this cemetery that I learned many life lessons and skills. I learned how to skateboard and to ride a bike and would treat the place as my own personal playground. Fond memories of this place exist for me but I feel that as a child with an immense imagination, this place also distressed me. I was not afraid of the cemetery itself, it was more that I was afraid of the imaginary creatures that existed within it. It is for these reasons I feel that I started to make art. It was a way to imagine things but not fear them.

At the age of thirteen my family moved and along I went to the most foreign and overwhelming places I have ever been. Santiago, Chile provided the venue in which my love for art was firmly established. While attending the International School, Nido de Aguilas, I became very aware of the visual arts and their historical significance. Artists like Jackson Pollack, and Picasso and Roberto Matta were all shown to me for the first time and in the cases of Picasso and Matta I was allowed to view their work in person in the galleries of Santiago with my fellow classmates. It was an instructor of mine named Victoria Sanchez that first sparked this interest and encouraged me to make work in new and interesting ways. She allowed me outside of the classroom where I was able to think without distraction and able to focus on the spaces around me. Santiago was a place of great contrasts, the landscape, the economic divisions and the culture. I picked up on these things as a young teenager and began to work with them in my art.

In the summer of 2000 I was brought back to Canada. Edmonton specifically served as home this time and my creativity and production of artwork came to a grinding halt. Never in my life have I been faced with such over whelming contrast between cities. Edmonton proved to be the single most uncreative place for me that I have ever been. I stopped making art for almost three years and was not allowed to continue in the fine arts at my chosen high school due to bureaucratic reasons. I felt that the culture was a facad and that no real culture actually existed there. High School eventually ended and I entered College studying general courses but quickly came to realize that I did not know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go.

Vancouver once again provided that answer. In the late summer of 2003 I moved back to Vancouver on my own with nothing more than a backpack and $800 to my name. Bouncing from job to job for a couple years I finally decided that it was time to begin pursuing a carrier in art. I had recently been asked to help run a clothing company with a friend, and was doing the majority of the design work which rekindled my love for making art.

I enrolled in the Fine Arts department at Langara College where I am currently finishing up my diploma. I have discovered a great love for design and have started a new clothing company that is distributed internationally in North America and Asia. I have regained my passion for art and this new outlook seems to be taking me to new places. I'm not sure where I'll be next year but four possibilities seem to be on the horizon. Only time will tell.

Tom Briggs