Nicholas Tay
- Anna Lilli Garai
- May 27
- 4 min read
Nicholas Tay paints stillness with intention. His figures are often caught in a moment of pause — sitting, resting, turning slightly away — as if the world is moving around them but they’ve stepped out for a second. There’s something quietly magnetic about how he captures space and gesture, drawing on memory and everyday observation. The mood is gentle but focused, with scenes that feel familiar without being tied to a specific place or time. Tay's paintings invite you to slow down and stay a while, to notice what might be happening just beneath the surface. The more you look, the more the quiet builds.
Q: You often show quiet moments instead of dramatic ones. What pulls you toward that kind of stillness?
A: I feel there is often more authenticity in stillness—in how we are in quiet moments when we feel no one is watching. These unguarded moments, where movement pauses and noise subsides, reveal something raw and unfiltered. For me—and perhaps this is part projection—but I sense that truth resides in the small, intimate beats between action. It is in these transitional spaces, where nothing obvious is occurring, that I feel the most honest expressions surface. There is no need for performance, no audience, no evaluation—only presence. Stillness, in this way, becomes an invocation of vulnerability. It allows the internal world to emerge unobstructed, often with more clarity and tenderness than moments charged with intention or drama. In my work, I try to hold space for this kind of quiet.
Q: You work across drawing, painting, and photography. What decides which one you reach for first?
A: It depends on the story I’m trying to tell. Drawing, painting, and photography each carry their own distinct vocabularies—unique ways of speaking that shape how a viewer might feel, listen, or respond.
Choosing between them is a bit like picking a language at the start of a conversation without knowing what language your dialogue partner speaks—hoping that a certain word, tone, or gesture will resonate more truthfully.
Some narratives call for the immediacy and precision of photography—a way to witness and document. Others ask for the deliberate mark-making of painting, where time imprints with varying rhythms into the surface and layers accumulate with distinct emotion. Drawing, for me, often feels like a more intimate, unfiltered language—my native language and first love.
Each medium offers a different kind of tactile relationship with the work: a different rhythm, resistance, or emotional proximity. Mostly—though planned and deliberate—the choice is intuitive. A hypothesis of which material approach will let the idea land with the most authentic expression. Ultimately, I reach for the medium that I feel can best carry the weight, tenderness, or complexity of what I’m trying to express.
Q: How do you approach showing tenderness without slipping into sentimentality?
A: I think that balance comes in the construction—or perhaps more accurately, the intentional under-construction—of a scene. I try to avoid the obvious and the overt, especially in the expression and posing of figures. There’s a fine line between evoking emotion and declaring it. Instead of dramatizing gestures or facial expressions, I try to create space for ambiguity—to let the viewer arrive at a moment of tenderness rather than punch the viewer in the face with it.
To me, sentimentality often comes from overstatement—from trying too hard to elicit a particular response. So I work to be restrained, to resist the urge to complete the emotional sentence with an exclamation mark. I’m not always successful.
Q: Your figures hold tension without saying much. What does silence mean in your work?
A: Whether it’s silence or quiet, I think I’m trying to capture something emotionally authentic—a truth of inner life that isn’t performed, polished, or exaggerated. Silence, to me, is both quiet and at the same time powerfully charged with emotion and history—it swells with the undeniable tension of the unsaid.
Q: Has your own background shaped the way you look at closeness or connection?
A: Oh, definitely. As an ethnically Chinese immigrant in Canada, my understanding of closeness and connection is inevitably shaped by questions of longing and belonging—of how well I fit into my adopted home, and what kinds of intimacy or distance arise in that process.
There’s often a quiet negotiation between cultures, languages, and expectations—a tension between visibility and invisibility, between wanting to fit in and needing to hold onto where I come from.
At the same time, I see closeness and connection as deeply human experiences—shaped by context, but not limited by it. While my background may guide the visual form those themes take in my work, the underlying emotions are universal. Moments of longing, kinship, hesitation, or care resonate across cultures.
What I try to do is hold space for both. To acknowledge the specificity of my perspective while also inviting viewers to find something of their own in the work. My hope is that this duality of the personal and the collective creates a layered sense of connection that can speak across differences.
Q: In a piece like "Coupling I," what makes visibility feel powerful—not just personal?
A: I think the act of being truly seen—not simply looked at, but recognized—is inherently powerful. In "Coupling I," visibility is both personal and collective. It’s personal in the sense that it affirms the existence of tenderness, love, and kinship between these two figures; and it’s powerful because it refuses to hide. To be visible in one’s own body, in one’s own skin, in one’s own love—without shame or stigma—becomes a quiet form of resistance. Especially for those whose identities have historically been marginalized or rendered invisible, that visibility carries weight. It removes the burden of secrecy, and in doing so, frees the spirit.
But I also think visibility in a work like this extends beyond the individuals portrayed. It becomes a mirror—a gesture outward. It invites others to see themselves, or to reconsider what intimacy, softness, and connection can look like. There’s power in seeing closeness that isn’t dramatized—just held.
