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!"