Untitled (Sailboat, Marine Life, Rabbits and Birds)

Joseph Sleep was born at sea somewhere between England and Canada, with his birth year uncertain but generally accepted as 1914. He grew up in Saint John, New Brunswick, and held various jobs in his early life, working as a fisherman and as a jack-of-all-trades. He spent most of his adult life working as a "carney" for the Bill Lynch Shows, a Halifax-based traveling circus.

In 1973, Sleep experienced heart trouble and was hospitalized at the Halifax Infirmary. During his convalescence, nursing staff provided him with paper and supplies to draw posters, which initiated his career as a painter. He was not eligible for an old age pension due to lack of an official birth certificate, so he came to depend on selling his pictures as his sole source of income. He opened a small studio at 1671 Argyle Street in Halifax.

Sleep worked with various materials including latex, cardboard, canvas, masonite, felt markers, pen, pencil, ballpoint pen, and spray paint. He developed an inventory of stenciled images traced from coloring books, magazines, and book illustrations, which he would enlarge using a simple scaling system and transfer to hard cardboard stencils for repeated use. He revised and expanded this inventory according to customer demand. His paintings featured flowers, fish, birds, animals, boats, and buildings. He created works in various sizes, including small 13½" x 13½" format paintings designed to fit in tourists' suitcases, which he hung on the fence of the Public Gardens in Halifax, as well as larger compositions on panels up to eight feet in length.

In 1971, ill health and economic decline forced Sleep from his studio to the street. A group of art students from the University gave him a place to stay in a janitor's room at the art school for the last months of his life. Joseph Sleep died in 1978. In 1981, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia held a retrospective exhibition of his work. His work is held in collections at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Dalhousie University Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Canadian Museum of History.