You're a best-selling artist, you have a reality show in the works, you swam with Beluga whales…How does a small town dad live such a big life in such a quiet way?

Well, it's all about choices: who we associate with, where we want to go, what we spend our time on, and by knowing exactly who we're in business for. The last one is The Big Secret. We've found ways to connect with several stove-piped niches - oil industry, real estate agents, etc - and speak to them in their which allows us to become well known within that group, but completely anonymous to the public as a whole…which is nice if I don't get a shave that morning and I look like a grub! It's not that much different in principle from your business model for this magazine, you 'get it'.

Yeh we rock. I love the statement "The art part of being an artist is probably 10 per cent of what an artist does." It describes your life perfectly because you are a dad, husband, friend, son … and you live life in ways most people only dream of. Tell me about a couple of your favourite experiences.

Well, 'Going with the flow' s the single biggest myth perpetrated on us, and it's become the banner we all hide behind as a way of excusing the fact that nobody wants to actually work at anything. We've also been very successful at freeing ourselves from obligations we don't want to be involved in, and we're immune to guilt trips. We aren't harsh about it, but life's too short to get caught up in things that just don't matter.

Another thing we do is protect our time, viciously. We get more done in a day, simply because we don't piss it away on stuff that has no meaning. Delegation and outsourcing has been huge too, and it was a big change in my thinking. My mom's family was entrepreneurial - they owned a camera store - and my Dad's families were farmers. So I'm not afraid of work, but the thinking came with baggage, like, 'work is toil', and the self-sufficiency thing was taken to extremes.

It drives my mother-in-law crazy to hear that I don't mow my own lawn or shovel my own driveway! She doesn't understand that there's $10 an hour jobs, there's $100 an hour jobs, and there's $1000 an hour jobs, and it was sea change in my thinking to finally understand that most people wallow around in $10 an hour jobs and claim they're too busy to do the $1000 jobs. I suggest that nobody gets ahead unless they make the jump and begin to find ways to get out of doing low value activities. The guy that owns the car dealership isn't the one sweeping the parking lot. Yes, it's his ultimate responsibility to have a clean and safe lot, but it's folly for him to be the one to actually grab a broom.

That driveway and lawn moving time goes to quality of life. It's handled, I don't have to procrastinate on it, and I can do more important things, whether it's drawing or just cuddling on the couch with The Boys. I understand that it takes a bit of doing to change your thinking. It felt a little ostentatious to have someone come and clean our home, mow our lawn and shovel our driveway at first - kind of like the home maintenance equivalent of the cigarette holder, but delegating those few simple things are worth 10 times the money spent.

Besides, I'd be screwing the kid out of his $6 to do my driveway!

It allows us to do some pretty cool things. For example, tonight I'm hosting a seminar in Edmonton, then I'm flying to Vegas tomorrow and unlike what most people do in Vegas, my buddy Marty and I will take in old fashioned barber shaves, we'll spend the day kayaking under the Hoover Dam, and we've got whump-ass seats to Friday's Police concert (again!) Then I'm home Saturday night to change clothes and then I'm flying to Regina to see Rush on Sunday, then meeting Karla and the Boys in Calgary before an evening business meeting on Monday. Tuesday I'm back in The Mine (my studio) working on two commission pieces.

Has the girlfriend who told you your art "stunk" ever contacted you since you became a famous artist? If so what was the conversation like?

Nope. And I doubt that I could be cool about it now, either. Na na na-na naaa.

What was it about Karla that made you decide to pop the question? You make it sound like I had much choice in the matter. Mostly, I recollect being hoiked up in front of a bishop or something, and looking up and blinking a few times and saying "Huh? Oh…uh…sure, I guess".

Kidding aside (and don't think that crack won't cost me) Karla and I were coffee buddies for quite a while before things got intimate. I was on the rebound, and she was just winding up her 'practice' marriage, so we bitched and moaned a lot, and as sometimes happens in these spots, she pounced on my neck and got her hooks into me. But the reason that it worked is that our values resonate. Our strengths are absolutely opposite, but our values and temperaments, our risk tolerances, our entrepreneurial philosophies, our parenting philosophies and so on all work together. Not perfectly, or seamlessly, or easily, but let's be dirt-honest here: if it wasn't for Karla, I'd be living in a tarpaper shack.

The second vital point is this: I'm a terrific Dad. It's the whole point of everything. I've heard comments from the sour-grapes dept that my travel cuts into parenting. Of course it does. However parenting is about raising secure, confident, educated, self-actualizing children who have a strong sense of right and wrong, the will to act in unpopular manners when those values are challenged, to keep safe, and not to infringe on the rights of others - in an environment where they know on both intellectual and emotional levels that their Mom and Dad loves them unconditionally. And that we won't let them get away with any crapolla. So far, my travelling has probably helped - I'm rarely, if ever never gone for more than 4 or 5 days a month, I call 3 or 4 times a day to talk to them, and I submit that consciously instilling values in our sons is worth infinitely more than simply clocking hours with them in front of the TV.

Still, the single biggest reason that I'm a terrific Dad is that Karla is an exemplary Mother: she's the anchor, and if she was a lesser woman, I'd be a lesser Dad. Full stop.

How has being a dad changed your outlook on life/art?
That's a toughie, and I suppose I should cobble up something snappy that fits into a soundbite. The art and life don't separate…here's an example. You know when you're in a certain mood and that certain song comes on the radio? POW! You're right back in high school with a broken heart. That's what art is supposed to do. But it had nothing to do with the song - the some might've been a stinker. My drawings aren't what I see when I see them: I see the events that were taking place in my life as I was drawing them - just like the song can take you back to an emotional moment.

So when I see Harvest 1954, I'm not seeing an open fall sky and smelling the hang of grain dust in the air, I'm recalling the big windy speech I had worked up to ask Karla to marry me, which I completely flubbed and clamped up on. What's that got to do with a combine? Nothing. And everything.

Becoming a Dad affected the business more than the art. It was time to quite screwing around. But after our oldest son Jackson died, I didn't draw for over a year, because I knew that I'd always see it for what it was: the first art after my son died in my arms. The first one was the beluga, and it's also why I haven't published prints from it yet either. I haven't even named it. I swam with the Belugas 3 months to the day Jackson died, but it took over a year to do the drawing. You'd never know that to look at it, and I purposefully avoided any reference to it on our web videos or anything else, anymore than you'd know about my botched wedding proposal from looking at Harvest 1954- although in the full length test footage you can see here and there that I've got one of Jackson's Fisher Price cows with me.

I don't know if that answered your question…

Tell me about the TV show that you've been working on? What's the show about?

It's a reality theme- wait, they want me to call it a "docu-drama" that focused on me, my art, and how what I do affects the people around me. So I'll be swimming with Great White Sharks, re-enacting The Battle of Britain or drawing nudes at The Playboy Mansion, then distilling it all down into a work of art, and it's set against the backdrop of my family, being Dad, a Husband, a business, owner, etc…all with the cameras rolling.
I've fought to retain ownership and control of the show, and that's cost some money, but I had to keep the show authentic, which is something Hollywood has no idea about. They wanted me to do some pretty stupid things that made no sense and undermined all of our positioning we've worked for years to build.

And last year we were vindicated by winning $10 000 and first place in The LATV Festival! Again, I'd like to point out that it was the Los Angeles TV festival, not the Des Moines TV festival.

One enthusiastic producer looked up at me and said "You're like a 21st Century Hemingway!" They liked the whole 'two-fisted rock and roll lifestyle' contrasted with the litter box and diapers I have to deal with when I get home.

It caused no end of commotion in the industry when this artist from Canada with no TV experience wades in and pouches the top prize. Haw!

But it also opened some higher level doors too, like the whacking big deal with a company that specializes in product placement, so he's lining up the money beforehand. It's still in development-hell, but I'm flying to LA for a meeting with Fox next month, so keep your fingers crossed! How cool would it be to have a big US reality show being based in Spruce Grove? The winning footage can be seen at www.pencilneck.com/media.php

Does your website reflect your personality? What the FAQ?! is pretty funny! I might steal if for our site…Are you really that much of a smartass? And I mean that in the nicest way, from one smartass to another!!

Well, along with loyalty, humour is SO important to me. The friends I've had are the same friends I've had since I was a teenager, and they've all got the ability to reduce me to tears of laughter. Foo, who was my best man, called to offer condolences on my 40th Birthday last week, and we spent over 4 hours giggling like little girls on a sleep over.

The website and all of our marketing is an extension of our personalities, no two ways about it. People need to connect, and especially in areas of commerce, they need to justify their interest in you to their circles of influence, and since most businesses desperately try to be sophisticated and stuffy, it's a great way to stand out. It doesn't mean being offensive or unprofessional, but if you can engage them emotionally, they become your biggest cheerleaders. You don't have to make them cry, but a few chuckles can be gold.