Gillian Moore

Peo­ple who meet artist An­drew J Fitt tend to re­mem­ber him. Yes, there's the fact that his move­ments and speech are af­fect­ed by cere­bral pal­sy, a neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der that im­pacts mus­cle con­trol. But most­ly it's his per­son­al­i­ty they re­mem­ber.The out­spo­ken graph­ic de­sign­er and mu­sic lover can of­ten be seen lim­ing with friends or tak­ing in a live band around Port-of-Spain. Now, he's singing his own song with the launch of his mem­oir, Aching to Be.

Fitt, in part­ner­ship with Cul­tureGo Mag­a­zine, will de­but his first lit­er­ary work, his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, on Ju­ly 29, at Medul­la Art Gallery, 37 Fitt Street, Wood­brook.The book tells the sto­ry of his life as a per­son liv­ing with a dis­abil­i­ty. It's told in his unique, ir­rev­er­ent style, de­scrib­ing the many ups and downs he's faced.

"Aching to Be is ac­tu­al­ly what I've been work­ing to­wards from the first day I was born," says Fitt. The book is the ex­pres­sion of his ul­ti­mate wish: "To be treat­ed as the man I want to be, with­out let­ting my­self be beat­en in­to sub­mis­sion by what so­ci­ety dic­tates I should be."It's al­so about what it took to be­come An­drew J Fitt."

Fitt was born in St Lu­cia in 1973. Dur­ing birth he suf­fered brain dam­age re­sult­ing in cere­bral pal­sy. Af­ter his fam­i­ly moved to T&T, he at­tend­ed Fa­ti­ma, grad­u­at­ing in 1993 and pass­ing all his sub­jects. He then got ac­cept­ed to the In­ter­na­tion­al Fine Art Col­lege (IFAC) in Flori­da in 1996, based on the art port­fo­lio he had put to­geth­er over the years. He had planned to study 3D an­i­ma­tion while at IFAC. How­ev­er, af­ter grad­u­at­ing in 1998, he de­cid­ed to do graph­ic art in­stead. He says, "It was what I was meant to do.

"You re­al­ly have to want to be an an­i­ma­tor; it's a re­al­ly in­tense job, and very com­pet­i­tive. You have to be re­al­ly good at it to make a liv­ing from it. I was nowhere near good, in my opin­ion.Fitt has been do­ing art pro­fes­sion­al­ly for over 20 years now, but he says he's al­ways been in­ter­est­ed in cre­ative ex­pres­sion, in spite of, or per­haps be­cause of his per­son­al chal­lenges.

"I'm an artist and a writer. I love cre­at­ing things out of noth­ing but a thought that may just ma­te­ri­alise on its own, or be trig­gered by out­side in­flu­ences. I am al­so a man with a dis­abil­i­ty that is try­ing not to have that dis­abil­i­ty de­fine who I am and what I can or can't do."Be­cause cere­bral pal­sy af­fects fine mo­tor skills, Fitt faced an ex­tra chal­lenge in terms of his cre­ative process: "I on­ly re­al­ly pur­sued art when com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy had de­vel­oped to a point where I could be the type of artist I want­ed to be."

Now, he us­es the In­ter­net as well: "I usu­al­ly have an idea of what I want to pro­duce, then I search the In­ter­net for im­ages that cor­re­spond with what I want. I use what I find as a guide, tak­ing what­ev­er I need from it, and then ex­per­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent op­tions over time."His of­ten bold, colour­ful works play with form, pat­tern and move­ment, but he shies away from defin­ing his style. "I tend not to at­tach la­bels to my work be­cause it box­es in my art, which is re­strict­ing and should be avoid­ed.

"I crave the free­dom to cre­ate any­thing at will. That be­ing said, I'm an au­dio­phile, so mu­sic does fac­tor in­to my art at times."

Mu­sic is one of Fitt's pas­sions. He is an avid fol­low­er of bands on the lo­cal mu­sic scene and at­tends their shows with reg­u­lar­i­ty. There, he's one of the gang. "When I lime with my friends in pub­lic places, my friends ac­cept me as just an­oth­er per­son. Yes, I need help do­ing stuff every so of­ten, but they don't re­sent me for it. I'm just try­ing to live the best life I can."

When one of his friends start­ed a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny, Fitt was of­fered the chance "to tell my sto­ry from my view­point, in my own words".He says: "Af­ter re­sist­ing for an hour, maybe less, I agreed to do it. I've al­ways want­ed to write for a long time, but on­ly when I felt I had lived enough and could re­al­ly ex­press my­self ad­e­quate­ly. I'm near­ly 42, so I think the time is right."

Aching to Be is no sob sto­ry. Rather, Fitt feels he has been lucky: "I've been washed in life."I re­al­ly want peo­ple to look at me as a per­son who wants to live life as best as I pos­si­bly I can. I have a hand­i­cap but it's not me. I am a man, an artist, a writer, a son, a broth­er, a friend, a hu­man be­ing, and many oth­er things on a very long list. The last thing on the list is dis­abled man."

Aching to be will be launched at 7 pm on Wednes­day at Medul­la Art Gallery, with a short read­ing from the book at 8 pm, fol­lowed by a brief Q&A ses­sion and meet-and-greet with the au­thor. The event is free and all are in­vit­ed.Aching To Be, Fitt's sto­ry of grow­ing up with cere­bral pal­sy in St Lu­cia and Trinidad, is pub­lished by P+H Books.

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