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Since the age of 12, I always wanted to live in New York. A friend of mine (who later died in a car crash) lived in the same apartment building as my family, she would invite me to watch reruns of the sixties Batman TV show on cable TV (which was a novelty at the time).I became quickly obsessed with Catwoman (played by Julie Newmar) I remember watching her strolling around wearing a black metalflake bodysuit with her vicious attitude and an incredible purr (I was hooked). Although I didn’t grasp the idea of Pop Art at the time, I knew one day I would land in Gotham city.

I was born in Brittany (northern west coast, France). My mother was of Celtic descendant, my father was French, Spanish and Native American Indian (Huron). They moved around the country wherever the jobs would take them, not the sort where you would find Britannia hotel rooms, or in fact any hotels at all. The only memory I have is when I was around 4 or 5 years old in this small village near the southern part of France. Picasso was our neighbor and his wife at the time was our landlady (who later committed suicide). In that village lived a comic book artist who would show me his work. This was the first time that I realized I wanted to become an artist.

In 1968, our family moves to Canada with barely a thousand dollars to their names. We lived in a hardcore working class neighborhood and at the time foreigners were un-welcomed. Luckily my father got a break and we moved to the Hudson Bay. He got a job as a development agent for the Quebec government. No one wanted to move that far up north due to the climate conditions and isolation (in the winter, which is the main season, the temperature falls to 50 to 60 below zero). Plane and helicopter crashes were common, my parents lost many friends.

So here we were living on an Indian (Cree) reservation and I was the first foreign kid they ever saw (with the exception of my younger brother). My latest work is inspired by that period of my life. I remember walking in the forest squinting at the sky through the branches. I’m also working on a photo book covering my time spent on the reservation (from 1970 to 1973). I found a box full of old slides after my father died which inspired me for the photo book project. I always wanted to go to art school but my father would have killed me. I still managed to study some art history but I’m mostly a self-taught artist. My school is the School of Observation, which means being curious about various artists, books of all sorts, films and music.

I always hated school with a passion, it always represented a place where I was subjected to physical and mental abuse. There was this oppressive vibe weighing over my head. I never felt like I belonged anywhere until I moved to New York 22 years ago. Most of the time I see art like I see music you don’t have to be the most technically skilled person to achieve the strongest results. Art, music and film critics are mostly failures in my book.

Written by Stephan Jay Rayon