Acknowledgement of Country

I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which I live and work in Melbourne (Narrm), the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation.

Rehann Vazid is Melbourne-based watercolour artist & Educator whose practice explores the dynamic and expressive potential of watercolour. He draws inspiration from his time in nature - hiking, snorkeling, kayaking and his love of literature and poetry, and finds a way to channel that into his art. He uses his art and teaching to share a message - to get out of the chair, the studio and to go outside into nature. It works wonders for the art, but also for the artist.

After a 15-year career in product and user experience design, Rehann made a deliberate transition into painting full-time. Along the way, he adopted several personal principles that profoundly shape his artistic life: He essentially has no social media presence, as he believes that public performance and digital visibility often disrupt an artist’s growth and ability to discover who they truly are as an artist.

In both his art and his teaching, immediacy is central. Rehann paints wet-into-wet, typically completing a work within 20–30 minutes while the paper is still wet. He teaches only in person, rejecting online classes and recorded tutorials in favour of real, embodied learning where attention, intuition and physical engagement shape the outcome. His teaching focuses on developing intuitive skills, painting fearlessly, building confidence and understanding how to create luminosity and movement in watercolour. After living in India and Australia for 2 decades each, he now mostly spends his time travelling, painting & teaching.

A slightly more candid Intro. Not unique, yet more true.

1.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

In the middle of the journey of my life I was returned to myself in a dark forest, where the true way was lost.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!

Ah! it is hard to speak of that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even when recalling renews my fear.

Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,
dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.

So bitter, death is hardly more severe. But to retell the good discovered there, I'll also tell the other things I saw.

- Dante, Inferno Canto 1

2.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

- Mary Oliver, The Journey

3.

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

- Derek Walcott, Love After Love