How a pivot to art and music helped this commercial photographer reclaim his time

Sometimes, it takes an external crisis to prompt a life change. Dwayne Martineau was a professional photographer living in Edmonton before the COVID-19 pandemic threw his work life into disarray. Business plummeted overnight, so he decided to pivot to devote his time to doing visual art and music.

Now, he’s an award-winning multimedia artist, with works recently displayed at the Art Gallery of Alberta and the Art Gallery of St. Albert. He’s a singer-songwriter, working on his own music while doing keyboards and vocals with indie folk band The Hearts. He’s also been mentoring young artists and giving seminars on grant writing as a way to “pay back the support I’ve received from the community.”

In this series, Reimagining Wealth, we explore the evolving definition of wealth in today’s world. Here, Mr. Martineau, who is a member of the Frog Lake First Nation, tells us how transitioning to life as an artist has improved his quality of life.

Can you describe your pre-pandemic career to give us some context?

I studied photography in school from 2009 to 2011, and then I started working full-time with a local photographer. There were just three of us in our company, but we were probably some of the busiest [commercial photographers] in town before the pandemic started. But the photography industry is about working with people in-person, and as soon as the pandemic was declared, it all shut down overnight.

I had been sort of growing my art and music career while I was working full-time in photography. [So] when that job basically evaporated, I decided that was a good time to try to flip that. [I would] go from being a full-time photographer, part-time artist and musician to full-time artist and musician doing freelance photography jobs on the side.

How has your quality of life changed since you’ve become a full-time artist and musician?

The main difference is that now my time is my own. I get to structure [my time] according to how I feel the most connected and healthy. I’m very much a night owl. I’m very productive between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., so I can work then if I want.

I’m also healthier. On a surface level, when I quit my job, I lost 40 pounds. That was probably from alleviating stress, and I stopped eating lunch out every day. On days when we were stuck in the studio sitting and staring at the computer screen all day, editing, the only time we got a break was at lunch, so we’d always make a point of going out for lunch and it was sort of a small joy.

I did a lot of clock-watching and that just ate away at my soul. It destroyed how I was feeling, like I was losing or wasting time. I realized that working for other people was a real challenge for me because when it came down to sort of renting out my time, I just thought, that’s the most precious thing that I have. I want to use it while I am healthy enough to have some adventures.

Your cultural background is First Nations. Does that inform your art?

Yeah, I think it does. And that’s something that I’ve been parsing and unpacking over the last 10 years or so as I developed my art practice [and] started identifying common themes.

I think [the connection] is largely through my Dad. We spent all summer, every summer, outside living on Crown land next to a lake, eating the fish we caught, whittling sticks, building fires, watching the birds and the animals and waking up and going, ‘Oh, there’s the black bear tracks.’ We had a level of connection and groundedness.

As a kid, I took it for granted, and it wasn’t until I was a lot older that I realized that part of why I [have chosen] this way of working and living is largely to get back to that.