Rey Tatad moved from the Philippines to Tisdale, Saskatchewan when he was 16 years old. Growing up, he loved illustration, and when it came time to decide on what to major in at University, Rey knew that art was what he wanted to pursue as his life’s work. In 2021 he graduated from the University of Regina with a degree in Fine Arts, picking up a national award for best emerging artist along the way. Rey Tatad’s art explores themes of colonization and identity, and the overlaps between the culture that he came from, and the culture he is contributing to now here in Canada. “I am definitely on a, on a journey on learning both of the histories and the cultures of the two countries - their differences, their similarities,” Rey says. “But the more that I learn, the more convoluted it gets. As an immigrant, you're neither really authentically Filipino nor authentically Canadian anymore. You're kind of in between.” Rey Tatad shares more of his ideas around identity, and his plans and dreams for his future. Leya Evelyn’s career as an abstract expressionist painter has spanned six decades, throughout which she has witnessed the acceptance of the art form as the dominant form of painting, placing New York City at the epicenter of the modern art world. Leya spent more than twenty years in New York City, and moved to Nova Scotia in the mid-nineteen-eighties where her art and teaching careers flourished. Now, at 85, Leya looks back at her influences and approach to painting. Sean Kennedy, professor of English at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, describes her painting as controlled explosions of colour and light. He says Leya’s paintings matter as much for what they do as what they refuse to do. “I was just born to paint. It's like, I don't feel like it's a choice. You know, it's one of those things that you just, I'm so glad that I found it early enough,” Leya says. “But once I found how much I loved painting, there was no question ever. I have never questioned it.”
PP:
Devoting your life and livelihood to making art takes guts.
It’s certainly never provided anyone with a sure-fire path to financial security.
And if you add to that the economic hardship that is a reality for many newcomers to Canada, it’s a wonder that anyone who is new to this country would pursue art as a career at all.
Rey Tatad
It's scary. It's uncertain. There was definitely pressure.
PP:
That is 24-year-old Rey Tatad.
Rey was born in the Philippines. He moved to Tisdale Saskatchewan when he was 16.
He bucked convention and rather than pursuing a degree in accounting, or engineering, Rey did something that a lot of people would consider a pretty risky venture.
He decided to follow his passion - which is drawing - and last year he graduated from the University of Regina with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Rey was right to believe in himself.
In 2020 he was chosen as the Saskatchewan winner of a national competition for emerging artists.
PP:
Rey Tatad’s art is jam-packed with religious and colonial references.Imagery that combines both of his identities: Filipino and Canadian.
Rey Tatad
As an immigrant, you're neither really authentically Filipino nor authentically Canadian anymore. You're kind of in between. And I'm trying to focus more on, on an individual level how I consider myself between those two identities.
PP
Countless Journey’s producer Tina Pittaway will be here with more about Rey Tatad and his art, and how he’s pushing forward with a career in art despite the challenges of the pandemic.
As well Tina will bring us into the studio of Nova Scotia artist Leya Evelyn.
Leya Evelyn
I was just born to paint. It's like, I don't feel like it's a choice. You know, it's one of those things that you just, I'm so glad that I found it early enough.
PP:
Leya Evelyn has been a working artist for more than sixty years. She was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Baltimore. In 1960, Leya was drawn to the call of the seismic shifts happening in the New York City art scene.
And after more than two decades there, Leya moved to Nova Scotia in the early 1980s, where her career as both an artist and a teacher took off.
Leya Evelyn
I'm not telling a story in any traditional way. It's just there, it exists.
TAKE OPENING MONTAGE
PP:
Welcome to Countless Journeys, from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.
My name is Paolo Pietropaolo and I am joined by producer Tina Pittaway.
Welcome Tina!
TP:
Thanks Paolo!
PP:
I can’t wait to dive in and hear more from these two artists, Rey Tatad and Leya Evelyn.
Rey’s work is so tightly packed with people and objects - religious figures and symbols… A lot going on.
TP:
Yes and military figures, the Catholic Church and we’ve got animals, cityscapes. It’s completely loaded from edge to edge.
It’s really reminiscent of Kent Monkman.
PP:
And a definite nod to Salvador Dali. Throwing things together that makes you think. Those surrealist juxtapositions.
TP:
And a little bit creepy.
PP:
I know we’ll hear more from Rey about his influences and some of the big ideas he’s tackling with his art, but let’s start at the beginning of Rey’s journey to Canada.
TP:
Sure. Rey was born and raised in the Philippines. He comes from the Island of Luzon, which is the largest island in the Philippines that is also home to its capital Manila.
Rey
It's a typical tropical island of rainforests, rugged terrain, hills, life was claustrophobic in a way. But you came to live with it.
Life in the Philippines was hectic. It's very quick paced, very on the go.
TP:
Rey was raised in the rural outskirts of Batangas City - what he affectionately calls the boondocks.
A very hilly environment, with bamboo groves, where his family owned a small parcel of land where they raised hogs.
It was a real contrast to the prairies that he would move to when he was 16.
PP:
Oh it would be some contrast! And I know we’ll hear more about how the landscape plays into his art. What brought his family to Saskatchewan?
TP:
Like a lot of Filipino immigrant families here in Canada, Rey’s mother arrived first, back in 2013.
She was working at an agricultural firm in Quill Lake, Saskatchewan.
Rey
And after eight months she was able to legally sponsor the rest of our family to come here. And that's how we came to be here in Saskatchewan.
TP:
And his ideas around land and the environment, and how he physically experiences the landscape really have a strong presence in his art.
So I wanted to hear from Rey about his first impressions of the landscape.
Here he describes what it was like landing in Saskatoon for the first time, when he arrived with his Dad and his sister back in 2014.
Rey
Once I landed in Saskatoon, I noticed how everything is so spaced far apart from each other, even the suburbs, the fields. It was an overwhelming sense of agoraphobia that sets in where it's all empty, flat horizon for all, for, for your eyes to see.
As we went home from Saskatoon to Tisdale
I remember having my neck craned to the window and there was, outside of the city, um, nothing much to see.
And this feeling permeated in my consciousness, and I was like, there's gotta be something to see.
I want to see anything that the land could offer. So perhaps that feeling, um, became imbued with how I approached my art.
I want there to be a lot of things to see, to take in, to consider, to ponder about. So that's how I combated that feeling by having all those figures in all my drawings.
PP:
There are definitely a lot of things to see in his art. I’m looking at one drawing called Chosen Lands. This is the kind of drawing you could spend a lot of time looking at the hidden meanings and juxtapositions. A volcano, a silhouetted city, a tree with red fabric, a man in a tophat, is that Pope John Paul listening to headphones. There’s a lot going on.
TP:
That was part of his portfolio of work that he created as part of his studies at the University of Regina, where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2021.
Rey says his art is almost a tonic to that agoraphobic reaction he had when he first arrived.
Rey
In order for me to cope with this moment of unfamiliarity, I try to fill in every bit of space as much as I can. I have a tendency to almost over-crowd as much space as I can with all these details.
But at the same time, I want to make meaning out of this. I don't want this to be nonsensical to the point where it's intimidating to look at.
My drawings stay focused on a lot of religious themes. That's informed by colonial history.
What I found interesting was that the Philippines, we kind of, uh, just embraced everything that has happened in the past 300 years.
It’s even in the name of the country itself, the Philippines. That was in reference to the Spanish emperor at the time King Philip the Second.
I saw that as a way the Philippines just came to accept their and have that colonial legacy be a part of their identity. It's not their entire identity, but it sure is a prime aspect into moulding that contemporary Filipino identity. Because of course there were already cultures and peoples long before the Spanish arrived on the, on the country.
PP:
I was doing some background reading on Rey and his art and I noticed that he counts Cree artist Kent Monkman as one of his influences, and you really do see that in his work.
TP:
Yes very much so, and I should mention that Rey stresses that he is at the beginning of his artistic journey.
He acknowledges that he has a lot to learn about Canada and the colonial history here.
As well as exploring the overlaps between the culture that he came from, and the culture he is contributing to now here in Canada.
Rey Tatad
I am definitely on a, on a journey on learning both of the histories and the cultures of the two countries - their differences, their similarities.
How they found meaning in their past and what they did out of it to make themselves stand out as uniquely say Filipino or uniquely Canadian.
But the more that I learn, the more convoluted it gets.
As an immigrant, you're neither really authentically Filipino nor authentically Canadian anymore. You're kind of in between.
I'm trying to focus more on, on an individual level to see how to see and feel how I, uh, how I consider myself between those two identities.
And to be honest, I feel like I want to focus more on my work, going into it on a more individual and personal level.
So rather than speaking to a broader culture that I happen to belong to, I want to also focus more on the individual self here as an immigrant. And how the feeling of wanting to belong to either of those cultures and identities, uh, reflect on myself as a person.
PP:
You know Tina, it’s really interesting listening to that. That feeling of belonging to more than one place and grappling with that sense of identity. I can hear that in what Rey is saying.
TP:
Right and I think also that idea as well of wanting to explore your art as an individual beyond being an immigrant, beyond being of a nation. There’s a lot going on.
PP:
So I wonder if that’s something that he grapples with too, this pressure to be a Filipino-Canadian artist if you know what I mean.
Did Rey always want to be an artist? Is art something that was part of his life since before he came to Canada?
TP:
Well certainly drawing was something he did when he was growing up. Cartooning is how he describes it, but it definitely had a different edge to it.
Rey Tatad
Art back home in the Philippines, it was much, much more of a hobby, a more of a pass time that I didn't really give much consideration to given you had to be practical back home with your expectations, with your hopes.
So prior to making that decision and going full in, in the art program, there was definitely pressure from not just family, but also friends since most of my friends were also Filipinos. And once I enrolled in to post-secondary education
I saw that there's much more leniency on all these opportunities. So I had to weigh my considerations, uh, carefully but slowly but surely I came to realise that, Hey, I can make something out of this here.
PP:
That’s wonderful. Tell me about the award he won?
TP:
That was something called the BMO 1ST Art Award, which is given to one student artist from each province, who are nominated by a provincial jury to compete in.
And Rey won for Saskatchewan and was scheduled to have a gallery show in Toronto along with the other winners but Covid put the kibosh on that unfortunately.
PP:
I really feel for so many of the students and recent graduates who have really felt the impact of the pandemic in so many fields - and especially in the arts where you need a crowd.
TP:
And access to those beginner level exhibits. And the small galleries where your art is in front of people’s faces. It is really tough because art of course is something you want to see in person - it’s crucial in many ways, and closing those exhibitions and gallery shows has really limited the public getting a chance to see and support artists like Rey.
PP:
Especially younger artists, those early exposures are so important.
TP:
Those early years are crucial and for some if those years are interrupted they just get derailed.
But he’s got a great attitude and is continuing to produce art so he’ll be ready when the time comes.
Rey Tatad
The one thing that I'm most excited is it's the future. Sure. It's scary. It's uncertain, especially right now, but that's what makes, uh, that's what makes it exciting for me,
But so far right now, what matters right now for me will be the production becausethe drawings that I do, they take a while because of how detail heavy they are in general. The plan for me is to wait COVID out.
I'm just sheltering out the pandemic and waiting for it to pan out because a history and world changing virus is something that I haven't considered in my plans two years ago.
So right now, I'm just excited to when things finally opened back up and make my fortunes on the future sometime soon.
PP:
That’s Saskatchewan artist Rey Tatad. Rey has such a great attitude.
TP:
Doesn’t he? I really loved connecting with his positive energy.
PP i just think Rey is handling it all with real grace.
TP:
I hope I get to see his artworks some day in person.
PP:
Me too.
TP:
And that actually is a nice way to get into the story of our next featured artist.
PP:
Leya Evelyn!
TP:
Yes. Now she’s an artist whose work I discovered when I moved to Nova Scotia a few years back but she’s been a working artist for more than sixty years.
PP:
Amazing. I’ve been looking at her work online and wow, it is so rich in colour, but like all art, I’m sure nothing beats seeing it in person.
TP:
Oh definitely. Now she has paintings ranging from 3 inches by 4 inches, all the way to multi-panel works that are nine feet high.
PP:
Woah - amazing. I can imagine standing in front of that. And it’s abstract expressionism.
TP:
It is, and I have a bit of a funny story about the first time I met Leya about four years ago.
PP:
What happened?
TP:
She has a beautiful light-filled home in a lakefront community called Hubley, which is along the South Shore of Nova Scotia.
And her studio was part of a tour a few years back, one of those studio rallys that are popular during tourist season where you get in your car and you have your map.
And my sister and I were the last folks to arrive at Leya’s studio around 5:00 pm, and we weren’t sure if we’d make it to her place on time, and as we got out of the car, out comes Leya and kind of hollered “I don’t paint boats!”
PP:
Say what? I don’t paint boats?
TP:
“I don’t paint boats!” I guess there had been a fellow just prior to our arrival who really liked paintings of boats, and while Nova Scotia is full of artists who absolutely create wonderful paintings of boats, that’s not what Leya does.
PP:
That’s just such a great story - I can just imagine how flabbergasted you must have been, but now hearing why she said that - how totally relatable that is.
TP:
It was a long day I think.
PP:
Tina - you paid another visit to Leya recently and you’ve put together a mini-documentary on her work - let’s hear that now - thanks for coming by, Tina
TP
Thanks Paolo.
PP
That’s Countless Journeys producer Tina Pittaway and here is her profile of the Nova Scotia painter - Leya Evelyn.
MUSIC
Leya Evelyn:
I was just born to paint. It's like, I don't feel like it's a choice. You know, it's one of those things that you just, I'm so glad that I found it early enough,
But once I found how much I loved painting, there was no question ever. I have never questioned it.
TP:
I visited Leya Evelyn in December. Her home which also houses her studio looks out onto a lake, and it’s surrounded by forest.
There’s a small stream that cuts through the property. The home is modern in its design - it’s narrow and tall, with big windows.
Walking into her home you’re surrounded by white walls and high ceilings.
Leya 3
I've got to have white walls.
And the whole house now is the same white. And I love it. I feel more comfortable. I don't know why. Yeah. Colour is very personal and it's very important, I think, to how you live.
TP
And on the walls are some of her paintings.
Paintings that she thought she was finished painting, paintings that have actually been in galleries but have now returned here, to Hubley.
Now, living with them in this room, she finds herself returning to them. Something she has done often throughout her career.
Leya Evelyn:
I don't know, it tells me it's like, sometimes I'll think it's done.
And then a week later, I'll look at it and I'll say no, it's not. Or even I'll even exhibited it, and it’ll come back for some reason.
I could even show you right now. I even worked on it a little bit last night. I've been reworking it over and over for probably a couple of years.
I tried uploading or putting images on Instagram and then I'd get people commenting, like, oh, they love it. And they love this and about it.
And then the next day it would be a different painting because that's the way I work. I just work, work and work and work it until I feel likeit's done.
TP
Paintings are meant to be seen, of course, to be experienced, rather than described.
But let me try. I’ll get a little help from others as well.
There’s a density - a saturation of colour, sometimes dominated by dark colour, sometimes dominated by light. There’s a bit of both in most.
Sean Kennedy is a professor of English at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, and he wrote of Leya Evelyn’s art in an essay “Every Painting Carries a Wound”.
He describes her painting as controlled explosions of colour and light.
He says Leya’s paintings matter as much for what they do as what they refuse to do.
If these canvases astonish, Kennedy says, it’s because they are fearless.
Leya Evelyn
I think that oftentimes people, when they see a painting like this, they call it dark. There's another one downstairs I want to show you for the same reason.
But I don't know why people think it's scary.
They wouldn't hang it in their house, whereas that's why I did it so that I could have it in my living room and show people like, look, it looks good.
Of course, everything else in here is white. So of course it looks good. So I think things do depend a lot on where you put them.
TP:
We head downstairs to her studio.
(SFX of footsteps and chatter)
Leya Evelyn
I used to work a lot on paper because it's less scary. And, um, so I would, at one point I put like this frame and then did the, whatever I was doing inside.
And then when I started working on canvas, I did the same thing, but I put the frame, the wooden frame on.
And then, uh, somebody told me to take the frame off and stop doing that because it would open the painting up.
And she was right, but it was a very scary thing to do for me when I ended up where the first time I did it on a canvas without, without the border, the physical border, I, uh, had anxiety attacks at the edges.
Really.
Tina: It was a physical manifestation of something emotional.
Leya: Yeah. There was some reason I needed to feel protected. The, the frame protected me, but you know, I, it was a wonderful thing to do to stop doing that.
TP
Leya Evelyn was born in 1937 in Washington DC, and raised in Baltimore.
When she was in her late teens she attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she received her undergraduate degree.
And that’s where she began to paint.
Leya Evelyn
I was studying literature and in my junior year a fellow student just said, let's go down the basement and paint. And I had been drawing on my own for years and just always loved drawing and never thought about painting as a career. And the experience changed my mind.
It was just a feeling of joy and excitement in just being alive.
TP:
From Brown, she went on to Yale University where she studied under Josef Albers, a German-born artist best known for his abstract paintings.
Albers is one of only a handful of living artists whose work was honoured with a retrospective show at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art.
You can see his influence in Leya’s canvases.
Albers is considered to be one of the most influential teachers of colour theory in the 20th century.
Leya
I went to a good school and they had a good education, but didn't stay long because New York was being very seductive.
TP:
New York City was the epicentre of abstract art in 1960. Emerging after the end of the second world war, abstract expressionism became the most influential art form in the Western world.
Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Louise Bourgeois, Joan Mitchell.
All of them, living, working, painting in New York.
Leya Evelyn
At that time, I mean, I was very aware of people like Helen Frankenthaler. She was having big shows.
They had this wonderful show at the Museum of Modern Art, and I think it was 1960. I think it was 16 American painters and they were, you know, all the big names, Kline, Rothko. It was very exciting.
TP:
Now at this time, late fifties, early sixties, it was pretty much taken for granted that women who went to art school would go on to teach art rather than be artists.
Leya, in time, would do both.
Leya married in the early sixties, and had two children.
Leya Evelyn
I was profoundly depressed for the first, well, for most of my marriage.
TP: Her marriage ended in 1974.
Leya Evelyn
With two children and three cats and a dog and fish tanks and everything else. But it was definitely easier than being married.
TP
Leya remained in New York after her marriage ended, and it was then that she says she began to develop a more professional relationship with her art.
In 1983 when she was 48, Leya moved to Nova Scotia, to be closer to the religious community that she was a part of at that time, but has since left.
And in 1986 she started teaching painting at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where she remained for twenty years.
And it’s throughout these years and into this stage of her career that Leya’s art has developed into such a powerful force.
Leya says that her art speaks to the inexpressible part of being human. Not being attached to objects, it makes sense out of the unknown.
Forcing her to be open to what she doesn't know.
Leya Evelyn
I'm waiting for canvases to come. I ordered them that I want to, um, start some new work. Here’s the bright green, which I never thought I would use again, I did years and years and years ago.
Tina: It's alive.
Leya: Yeah. I love it.
Tina: Like it's growing
Leya: This one because I ran out of the pigment stick with the actual colour I wanted, which is, I had to mix it right on the canvas and it came out. I mean, I love the, it's not quite finished this one, but you can see the change in many colours of green because I was mixing it on the canvas. Yeah.
Phil Secord
They're gorgeous. They're gorgeous. I love them.
TP:
Phil Secord is the owner of Secord Gallery in Halifax, and he along with his life and business partner Wendy Secordhave represented Leya’s work for over thirty years.
Phil Secord
She practised, she worked on it. She poured herself into it.
In creating work as she has so consistently for such a long period of time, she has to have and has developed this confidence about what it is she's doing. “I love my painting. I love what I’m making”,
So with abstractionists, especially the deeper they go into something that is not grounded in nature, are doing something else.
It's a kind of spiritual journey in a sense of acknowledging beauty.
Leya Evelyn
I'm not telling a story in any traditional way.It's just there, it exists, at least for me. I mean, you can impose your own story on it if you have to. The ideal viewer will just feel rather than have to think about what's happening.
PP:
That’s the Nova Scotia painter Leya Evelyn. Thanks to Countless Journeys producer Tina Pittaway for putting together that profile.
(MUSIC UP)
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Countless Journeys comes to you from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, located at the Halifax Seaport.
I’m PP, bye for now.