BRUSHSTROKES - An Interview With William D. Higginson
From a childhood brush with death to the winning Battle of the Brush, the award-winning surrealist talks with Benjamin Allmon about his convoluted journey to the top of Canada’s art world.
The road into the arts is not an easy one, but when you are as stubborn as William D. Higginson, there is no alternative.
“I live for art,” he has said before in interviews, and this is as true today as it was nearly forty years ago. “From the age of three, this has never changed,” he adds. “This passion truly began when I was caught red-handed, literally, when sneaking out of sports education in Sixth Grade and breaking back into my art classroom to paint.”
“I recall slapping the paint onto the paper, folding it together to watch the patterns and colours emerge and this being the greatest feeling in life so far.”
The following year, when he was eleven, Higginson was struck down by life-threatening liver failure, leaving him in a coma for a number of days on life support. A few weeks later he recovered, only to be diagnosed with leukaemia.
Art became more than a pleasing hobby, but a coping mechanism.
“My parents would know I was getting better when I’d ask for the supplies. I think it was an unmistakable sign that I was a true artist and nothing was ever going to change this.”
His early years of high school were mostly spent at home or in the school art room - day and night - guided buy two crucially important influences on his life: art teachers Mike Sleeman and Stephen Eardley. Artwork wasn’t always confined to his sketchbooks, either.
“My Science, English, Japanese, Religion textbooks - all were riddled with sketches, surrealistic designs, and ideas. A sign of things to come, I suppose.”
As the years progressed, and he recovered from leukaemia, Higginson’s journey back to life was marked with rebellion, excess, and confusion as to why he was alive.
“This didn’t help my chances of getting into art school, and when I was denied entry I joined the military. I think it was a response to my wild actions and a desire to correct them for my family and friends.”
It was not an easy choice, he remembers, but looking back there is no doubt in his mind that this was the turning point.
“I gained an unending amount of energy for hard work, a drive to succeed, a discipline that is essential for life as a successful artist,” he reflects.
It was this combination of inherent characteristics and those gained from the army that fuelled his return to art in 2000. “I filled my small apartment with more canvases and supplies than I could count, placing an easel at the end of my bed and living inside this bubble for the next six years.”
Higginson created hundreds of artworks during this period; mastering the mediums of graphite pencil, pastel, oil, acrylic, and applying them to surrealism, realism, and abstract.
“I was unstoppable!” he laughs. “I wanted to get my hands on everything.”
This desire to push himself personally and creatively eventually led to his need to find new territory. Having sold hundreds of artworks in Australia - in the process creating a large secure fanbase - he packed up and left it all behind for Canada, where he had no contacts, no community...but a fresh canvas to work with.
“I really wanted to test myself. I threw my return ticket in the bin, refused offers of standard jobs, and simply went for it. It wasn’t easy,” he chuckles.
But within three months his career was up and running.
“Being in the public eye was essential,” he says. “I spent day after day in parks, cafes...anywhere I could get an easel into and paint for the public to see. This was the key. Through this I met the community, was offered various opportunities and eventually made my way to the top of the Vancouver art scene.”
This “outside of the box” approach to live art led Higginson to become the driving force behind one of Vancouver’s largest and most vibrant art community events: Art Battle. Competitive live painting, it was a concept that inspired - and was the making of - some of Vancouver’s leading artists. It changed the lives of the artists in the city, but it would also change his life forever.
“It was where I met the love of my life, Olga Rybalko,” he says. “She is a champion live painter herself; we teamed up professionally, so I guess you could say we’re joined at the hip.” This partnership led them to winning the Grand Championship of the Battle of the Brush against the best teams in Vancouver. With Olga, he also created Impressions Live Art, one of the world’s first live wedding painting companies.
His increasing involvement in the art community was accompanied by a desire to help his fellow artists, which led to the creation of another world-first, Direct2Artist. The brainchild of Higginson and his friend and entrepreneur Colin Brown, Direct2Artist became one of the world’s leading software programs for artists.
“Direct2Artist was a unique concept that gave artists a personal website, a marketplace, inventory management systems, automated social media, newsletter services, basic AI searching, augmented reality to show their art in client homes, countless unseen online business advantages, and round-the-clock customer service to make sure the user could handle the system.”
Over 3000 artists in over 80 countries adopted this revolutionary system, and what began as a an endeavour of good intentions towards his fellow artists rapidly overtook Higginson’s life.
“My desire to help others in the struggle to succeed corresponded with a severe downturn in my own artistic output. More worryingly, the stress also led to a decline in my health; the combination resulted in a complete shutdown, both artistically and physically.
“I can remember in late 2015 I was visited by an old friend from Australia. When he saw me he remarked on how ill I seemed...the following day I was admitted to hospital. Confined to quarters for a few days, I was forced to reassess my life.“
Haunted by the memories of his childhood brush with death, Higginson resolved to return to that which he was destined for - his art.
“It was hard letting go of Direct2Artist, because I loved helping others and smoothing the way for them, but in the end I had to be true to myself.”
Once again, Higginson began the slow process of rebuilding. It was a process he was familiar with, having overcome leukaemia, a misspent youth, life after the army, moving to Canada, and now recovering from being all things to all people.
But this time, with all he had learned along the way, the results were astonishing.
“I spent a year planning my comeback, focussing on rebranding my career as the surrealist I’d always wanted to be. The business acumen I’d acquired from running D2A meant that by November 2016, I’d been labelled Vancouver's hardest-working Surrealist. Three months later I was invited to show my work alongside a collection of Salvador Dali’s work, my childhood hero.”
From there he began his second collection and series: The Peregrine Man. A creation borne out of his own experience in business, bad decisions, views on the world, health, life (and death), the Peregrine Man is a representation of himself.
“I guess you could say I wanted to poke the bear. I wanted to shake the viewer with the concepts of the Peregrine Man, telling a deeper story with these images about life and the challenges that we all face.”
Each piece was meticulously researched, studied, discussed, designed, scrutinised and finally painted over thousands of hours in the studio...a place that he calls his tropical island.
The next step was always going to be the enshrinement of that island - his own gallery. Nestled in Vancouver’s Yaletown, the Space is a small community of Higginson’s favourite hard-working artists, working together to create a better life in the arts for themselves.
It was here that The Peregrine Man exhibition was staged; Higginson’s most successful endeavour thus far, nearly every piece sold - a feat that eludes most artists.
It led to him being referred to as Canada’s premier living surrealist.
“It’s a title which I’m not willing to accept, because I know this is just the beginning. What is yet to come is what drives me every day, ever hour, every minute.”
“I think of my love of art as a seed planted deep inside me, deeper than anything else in this world. My illness, near-death experiences, and my love of life and will to portray the world as a better place is what waters that seed. The desire to see what flowers is what drives me on,” he smiles.
It is obvious, even from the briefest time spent with the man, that nothing will stop Higginson from achieving whatever he sets his mind to. The question of course, having witnessed the fantastic creations he conjures, is just what that could be.
Benjamin Allmon is an author and freelance journalist by trade. In 2016 Odyssey Books published his music/adventure memoir, Foot Notes. His short story anthology, Mr Ordinary Dons a Disguise, will be released by Odyssey in late 2017.
His work has appeared in Virgin Voyeur Magazine, The Spectator, Blank Magazine, Journeys Magazine, Jetstar Magazine, Outback Magazine, Stories of Music, Renaissance, Punchnel's, Tincture Journal, The Writer and Aurealis to name a few.