“The Art for Healing Foundation was started in 2002 by myself and my life partner after many visits to a dying friend at the Royal Victoria Hospital in 2001. We’re art collectors and we would go there and see no art on the walls and feel very sad. This was the year that I decided to open up an art gallery. I was meeting with many artists and seeing a ton of art unexposed in the city, and then we’d go up to the Royal Victoria Hospital and see nothing. So we thought there’s something wrong here: there’s so much art in the city and nothing in the hospitals, but the people in the hospitals have their own day-to-day burdens to deal with. If we start our own organization, maybe we would have better luck at creating our own healing environments with donated art works.”

“When you were younger, did you always think you would be doing something with art?”

“Absolutely not. I was never really that interested in art until I was in my early twenties and I became friends with somebody who was an artist. He taught me everything I know today. He really opened my eyes to how beautiful the art world was. He was the friend who was dying in the hospital in 2001. So every time we see his family, his sisters are always so thrilled with the success of the Foundation because they feel that it really started because of him. If he had not been sick that year, we would not have been going to the hospital almost three, four times a week and maybe this idea wouldn’t have come up. Now there’s about 9,000 pieces installed across Canada in health institutions. So to answer your question, I didn’t have an interest in art at all. I always tell young people that if you don’t know what to do with your life and you don’t know what your passion is, open yourself up to different things and different ideas. Go explore the world… that’s how you’re going to find your passion. That’s really how it happened with me. I never could have predicted how it turned out.”

Category: People