Biography of a Pencilneck ®

What's a Partially Color Blind Musician
To Do For a Living?

Find someone you trust to take you clothes shopping, then become a best-selling artist, of course!

Owen Garratt was born in Regina, Canada in 1968 and has very quickly become a best selling artist - while remaining a well kept secret. Over fifteen hundred corporations across the United States and Canada - including BMW, Cargill, ReMax, Cummins, CNR, Hertz, GE Capitol, H&R Block, Merrill Lynch, Owens-Corning and the R.C.M.P. have purchased his work, and his art can be found in collections around the world.

As Owen likes to put it he's "completely unencumbered by formal instruction" and his art is strictly black and white. "I didn't realise that I was 'color-impaired' until I was 19, when I tried to join the Naval Reserve as a summer job. Surprise!"

"I'm not totally color blind, but if it's not a real vibrant, primary color, all I get is mud. So unless I wanted a career painting Amazonian tree frogs, it was pencil for me!"

In addition to being a World Class artist, Owen is a former full time freelance drummer, an avid bookworm and writer, an intrepid adventurer, a great outdoors loving, husband, father and all round Good Joe.

Oddly enough, he's not the wild-haired, tie-dyed, over-emoting, flaky artist type; he's a red meat eating, clean shaven, six-foot guy next door.

"I drew a lot as a kid but as I hit my teens, I got into music, sports, and all of the other teenage hair-raisers. I didn't quit drawing; I just never got around to it. When I was 27, I drew a tiger for a Christmas present, and it was a big hit. An argument with a girlfriend who thought it stunk was the spark that got me to take it up seriously."

"I was stung into proving that I could do art, and I sold over 900 prints of my very next drawing, which is a little is puzzling, because those first drawings were so bad they nearly hung themselves!"

Since that very first drawing, Owen has been a full time artist.

"I was lucky that I got involved with the woman who would become my wife early in my career, or it probably wouldn’t have got very far. Artists come in all varieties and flavors, but the one thing all serious artists need is time…vast, selfish, astonishing amounts of time. Since they only give you 24 hours every day, an awful lot of important things can fall behind awful quick. Without her fending off life’s distractions, there’s no way that I could have found the great spans of time and introspection that I needed to develop my art and business. If it wasn’t for her, I think I’d be living in a tarpaper shack."

"The events in my life, my marriage, becoming a father (three times!), the laughter with worthwhile people, bereavements, good songs, bad choices, onslaughts of challenges and occasional triumphs are all reflected in the drawings I create. The artwork may have nothing to do with the event, but every drawing is charged with the emotions of the time."

"It’s like hearing that certain song come on the radio and BOOM - you’re right back in high school with a broken heart. I don’t see the subject in my drawings, really – I’m pulled back into what was happening in my life at the time I drew it. It demonstrates how art and life are inseparably linked."

"I’ve had literally THOUSANDS of conversations, letters and emails that began with ‘this picture reminds me so much of my…’"

"When art ‘clicks’ that means it triggered an emotional response. If the art has enough of that ‘something’ to spark smiles and memories, there’s a real connection between art, artist, and viewer."

"And THAT’S why I do what I do, and go to the lengths that I go to…people only respond to Passion, Authenticity and The Authority of Experience. My clients and members KNOW that I know."

In perhaps the biggest development in his career to date, Owen also is starring in a television series about his life and art that’s currently in development for one of the major cable networks in the United States, and his test footage won 1st prize at the LATV Festival!

"For the test footage, we headed up towards the Arctic Circle and went snorkeling with Beluga whales. There were so many whales that it looked like the water was boiling; there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them swarming around our boat. It was magic - real magic…not that Harry Potter stuff."

"So with the TV show, running around the U.S. having meetings about the TV show, writing a book to accompany the TV show, co-writing and recording the music for the TV show, various charity functions and appearances, ceaseless traveling, constant research for upcoming drawings, managing support staff, corporate commissions, keeping in touch with clients, losing this bloody weight, being a husband and raising two outstanding little boys… "

"Somehow, I still have to find the time to actually draw something!"