Peter Schuyff was born in 1958 in Baam, Holland. In 1967 he moved with his family to Vancouver, Canada, where his father was a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University. His mother is an artist. Growing up amid the radicalism of the late '60s and early '70s, Schuyff was intrigued by his father's "hippie" colleagues. He also became infatuated with a number of art-world personalities, video artists, Andy Warhol, the New York School painters, especially Willem de Kooning. "I was very impressed that they could get away with doing such naughty work," he says. "It seemed so rich, so seductive, so profound."

Schuyff decided after high school to enroll at the Vancouver School of Art. He studied there for a year and a half but found h...