"When I was a kid I liked to write, take photos, ride my bike, run, look at the World Books, collect four-leaf clovers, throw rocks, draw people, play baseball, football, and basketball, climb trees, listen to Chuck Berry, etc. Riding in my parents '51 Chevy on trips I would imagine I was on a motorcycle speeding alongside, jumping over obstacles, and racing off to a farmhouse in the distance and back. I liked tapping out a beat on the dashboard and singing "When the Saints Go Marching In." The Bomb, hanging low like a big, dark cloud was a scary thought for a kid, just like the notion of Hell but more real. I loved JFK. He was killed when I was in math class in 7th grade. I don't know who did it. I loved Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. They were killed when I was in high school. I don't know who did it. I was shy and still trying to figure out how to talk to a girl when I was given a number for the Vietnam draft. Where the hell was Vietnam? "...what are we fightin' for, don't ask me I don't give a damn." After that I was in and out of school and jobs, and trying to figure out who I was, so I tried carpentry, farming, guitar, and kept writing and drawing, always drawing. I found The Blues and then Coltrane. Figured out that it's got to have Soul. I built a log cabin. Kerouac struck a personal chord, not the whole Beat crap, but the Heart. One day I said to my brother, "I think I'm gonna go back to school, but I don't know what to study." He said, "why don't you study art, you're always drawing?" What a moment of clarity! I don't know why I needed to hear someone else say the obvious, but that's exactly what I did. At UNC-Chapel Hill I got an education of sorts, and a wife, my brilliant and beautiful Van. 27 years later we are growing together and I'm still making art which is after all something I've always done."

Garrison’s work is currently shown in several galleries in the Southeastern United States, including his own gallery/studio at 613 West Morgan Street in Raleigh. For most of his career thus far, Garrison’s work in acrylic, oil, photo transfer and various mixed-media materials, has focused on the inherent expressiveness of the human figure, as well as still-life, rendered in strong color and contrasts of light and dark, and fairly loose brushwork, often by combining realistic detail with total abstraction. His work has earned him numerous awards, one grant, and can be found in many corporate and private collections. Garrison currently lives in downtown Raleigh in a former department store with his wife Van.