I’m Rett

In the late 1980s, fresh out of highschool, I moved south from a small city in Northern Ontario to Toronto in order to study Fine Art at York University. At the time, the number of students enrolled at the university was approximately equal to half the population of my hometown. I found the size of classes and the busyness of the campus overwhelming at times and would often escape them by taking long walks through the city. On those trips, I frequently crossed paths with a woman I recognised from the fine arts building.

It wasn’t until we both attended a workshop off-campus however, that we finally spoke. It turned out that she had interrupted her studies in art early-on and was just returning after a decade or more of doing other things. This struck me, since I was also considering putting my studies on hold and so I asked her if she had any advice. She told me I shouldn’t worry about taking a break because if art was in me, it would never leave me, it would stick around and pester me till I was ready to give myself over to it.

I wasn’t sure if she was right, but when I found a job at the end of the year, I decided to drop out.

In the decades that followed, her words came back to me often. No matter where I have lived, or what I have been doing career-wise, my home has always had a supply of paints, boards, canvases, and photography equipment that were in use. There were even a few small exhibitions along the way.

A few years ago though, a book I was translating from German to English (Gerko Egert’s Moving Relation – Touch in Contemporary Dance) got me thinking differently about my artwork. Something intangible shifted and my desire to create took on a new intensity.

As soon as the book project was completed, I converted my home office into a full- time studio space. No longer was art just something I made in my spare time.

Nowadays, things I discover through my camera transfer to other mediums and my experiences with those feed back into my photography. It is a moving relation. The drive to create has overtaken me and just as the woman predicted decades ago, I have given myself over to it.