Shiva's Really Scary Gifts

Book excerpt: Governor General's Award-winning visual artist John Scott is perhaps best known for his Trans Am of the Apocalypse, a car with the entire Book of Revelation scratched onto it, which is on display at the National Gallery of Canada. As Ann MacDonald discovered when she began working with him, Scott's personal life is no less compelling. So she sat down with Scott, a tape recorder and a stack of napkins for him to draw on - Shiva's Really Scary Gifts is the result. From catching a baseball bat in the teeth to harbouring the FBI's most-wanted fugitive in his Queen Street studio, John Scott has, it seems, done it all. Join him as he, in words and drawings, terrifies a pair of robbers, loses a parent, and struggles to get a gun permit for an art installation - John Scott's intriguing stories and the hundred accompanying drawings will help you get to know the man behind the Am. Shiva's Really Scary Gifts is a self-portrait of the artist as a delusional, diseased and debauched young man, a book as hilarious as it is touching.