A Vancouver artist believes he has the right stuff to head to the moon.

“It’s been a childhood dream of mine to go into outer space,” Michael Markowsky told CTV News Channel on Saturday. “Since I became an artist, I had a dream of going to outer space and making a painting… on the surface of the moon. When I woke up from that dream, I thought, ‘That was ridiculous.’ But then the more I thought about it, I thought maybe it’s actually ridiculous that it hasn’t happened yet.”

In five years, though, it very likely will.

Standing alongside SpaceX founder Elon Musk on Sept. 17, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced that he would be taking six to eight creative types with him on a private 2023 lunar flyby trip.

"I did not want to have such a fantastic experience by myself," Maezawa said at a press event with Musk. "I wish to create amazing works of art for humankind.”

Even though Maezawa has not said how he will select his guests, Markowsky believes he’s well-positioned to join the mission.

“I’ve actually been essentially training for this mission for the past 10 years,” he said while sporting a SpaceX t-shirt. “I’m not aware of any other artists around the world who’ve been in training for a lunar mission.”

As part of the Canadian Forces Artists Program, Markowsky has painted landscapes from the frigid North Pole and made “cloudscape drawings” from the backseat of a CF-18 Hornet fighter jet travelling faster than the speed of sound.

Markowsky is now urging people to express their support of what he calls “the most ridiculous dream in the world” with the social media hashtags #PaintOnTheMoon and #MarkowskyToTheMoon.

“I also want to use this as an opportunity to encourage other people to think about their own dreams and express their dreams,” the artist added.

“Musk and Maezawa, you know, they are visionaries. They’ve seen that space travel is a possibility for everybody and to bring artists around to help document that experience so that we can share it with the billions of other people who may not be able to go there, I think is a gift they’re giving to the world.”