A small-town Kedah boy who dared to make the world his canvas

EVERY so often, a painting finds its way into your life and stays there, not because you know what it means, but because of how it makes you feel.

I've never considered myself an art aficionado, though I've long been drawn to the light-dappled worlds of Claude Monet and the Impressionists, where ordinary moments seem to shimmer with beauty.

Closer to home, it's the work of Malaysian-born, New York-based artist Eng Tay that has held a particular place in my affections.

His paintings rarely clamour for attention. Couples sit side by side, families gather, musicians play; ordinary moments unfold with a warmth that makes you want to linger a little longer.

I know this from a painting of his that I've cherished for years, a gift depicting a couple — presumably husband and wife — seated together, heads looking up.

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I've never known their story, yet something about their closeness has always brought me peace.

So, when an invitation arrived on WhatsApp to meet the artist behind the painting, I was overjoyed. Tay was in Kuala Lumpur for Fragments of a Season — Tracing the Passage of Light and Time, an exhibition presented by CAP Gallery at The Starhill.

Bringing together 15 Malaysian contemporary artists, the exhibition explored how fleeting experiences can become lasting memories — a fitting theme for an artist whose work has stayed with me for so long.

BEYOND BUKIT BESAR

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When we meet, the 79-year-old is every bit as disarming as I'd hoped. His glasses perch on his nose, his eyes crinkle when he smiles and he has an easy gentleness about him. Yet the life that shaped this contemplative vision began far from the galleries and studios of New York.

Tay grew up in Bukit Besar, a small village in Kedah, the fifth of eight children. His father worked on a rubber estate, while his mother made kuih to supplement the household income. They had food on the table and a roof over their heads, he recalls, but little room for extravagance.

His mother died when he was still young, and his father later remarried. Tay eventually stayed with an older brother, helping out at the latter's grocery shop. He wasn't particularly close to his siblings and largely found his own way, without a mentor or a carefully mapped-out future.

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What he did have was an appetite for the world beyond the one he knew.

At school, he discovered an interest in art, although academic pursuits didn't especially appeal to him. Painting kampung scenes was a familiar starting point for young artists in the 1960s, but Tay wanted to take his ambitions further.

He initially considered Taiwan, where studying would be more affordable and the language more manageable, before a teacher encouraged him to look towards the United States. His father, a traditional man, struggled to understand the appeal. What, after all, could a son do with art?

Tay understood the conventional path expected of him: find a job, marry, have children and settle down. He could even imagine himself selling char kway teow. But the prospect of a life already laid out for him held little attraction.

"I wanted to see the world," he says simply.

In 1968, aged 20, he left for New York with little more than a one-way ticket and about US$300, pooled together by relatives who contributed what they could. He'd never travelled abroad; the furthest he had ventured from home was Penang — to watch movies.

His journey took him through Singapore, Taipei, Hawaii and Tokyo before he finally landed at John F Kennedy International Airport. Nobody was waiting to receive him. He shared a taxi with a Japanese couple, spent his first night on a teacher's friend's couch and found a studio apartment the following day for US$32 a month.

For a young man arriving in an unfamiliar city, it was hardly a grand beginning. But it gave him somewhere to start.

MAKING A LIVING

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Freedom, discovered Tay, came with bills to pay.

One of his first jobs was in a Chinatown sausage factory, where he worked from 5am to 5pm. Once art school began, he left the factory, but summer holidays offered little respite. He took on two or three jobs at a time, working in restaurants and a women's wig shop to pay his tuition and living expenses. Some restaurant jobs came with a room upstairs, helping him stretch his money a little further.

At the Art Students League and later the School of Visual Arts, where he graduated in 1972 with a background in graphic design, Tay was learning to turn his interest in arts into a livelihood. Commercial art offered a practical route, but a printmaking elective opened up an unexpected possibility. He became fascinated by the process and began producing limited-edition etchings.

His first break came at an outdoor art fair, where a Taiwanese artist encouraged him to take a booth. Artists paid a fee to exhibit and sold directly to the public, with no gallery taking a commission.

Tay's first sale was a watercolour, possibly depicting a kampung scene. He remembers the happiness of having someone buy something he'd made — a small but significant affirmation that his art could find an audience.

Before long, he was loading framed pieces into a van and travelling to art fairs across the US, heading north in summer and south to Florida in winter. Some weekends brought good sales; others were less rewarding. Each fair offered another opportunity to find a buyer.

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Eventually, an agent began placing his work in galleries across the US, Europe and Japan. His audience widened, although the business of art wasn't always as lucrative as it appeared.

Printing materials and production costs ate into his earnings, and Tay learnt that making a living from art required persistence as much as talent. Even when a work sold, the costs of producing it still had to be covered, he explains.

Over time, collectors began seeking him out directly. His work found buyers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, with some collectors travelling from elsewhere in the region to acquire his pieces. Malaysia, too, became part of that journey, as local gallery connections helped him establish a presence back home.

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New York also brought Tay into contact with a vibrant art scene. Living in SoHo in the early 1980s, he watched young artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring emerge, buying works he liked, sometimes in instalments. He encountered Robert Rauschenberg and witnessed a collaboration between Basquiat and Andy Warhol, though Warhol's work never particularly appealed to him.

Yet Tay's own art remained rooted in people and everyday life. Painting trips through South America and Indonesia between 1978 and 1980 helped shape his signature imagery: rounded figures, families gathered together, lovers in quiet companionship and musicians absorbed in their instruments.

Today, his paintings, etchings and sculptures are held in collections including Dewan Filharmonik Petronas, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Japan's Fukuyama Museum of Art and New York University's Department of Anthropology. His bronze sculptures also grace residential developments in Kuala Lumpur.

LANGUAGE OF LOVE

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Yet a list of exhibitions, collectors and institutional holdings tells only part of Tay's story. What draws me most to his work is its human quality: the couples, families and musicians who inhabit his canvases, often appearing content simply to be in one another's company.

Asked why his paintings rarely veer towards drama, he offers an answer that feels entirely in keeping with the man sitting before me. His art, he explains, reflects his life. "My life is calm. I'm not a loud person," declares Tay.

His palette follows a similarly understated sensibility, with brown, deep black and olive green among his preferred colours. The figures themselves are stylised rather than realistic, their softly defined features leaving room for viewers to find their own meanings.

Tay has spent decades in New York, surrounded by different artistic movements, including abstraction. Yet he's reluctant to dictate what people should see or feel when they look at his work.

"The painting should leave room for the viewer's own response," he says.

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When our conversation turns to love, Tay reflects on how differently affection can be expressed across cultures. In some Asian families, he observes, people may not hug, kiss or say "I love you" very often. "But they care," he says, pointing to the small, everyday gestures through which affection finds expression.

He thinks of his father, who'd ask how he was doing. Living in New York meant they were separated by distance at a time when keeping in touch was far less immediate than it is today. His father died while Tay was still in the US, leaving him to reflect on the ways care and affection had been expressed between them.

Perhaps this is what gives his paintings their particular resonance: love is rarely announced in grand gestures, but found in the simple act of being present for another person.

Tay takes much the same approach to life itself. He has never been one for elaborate plans, preferring to make the most of what's in front of him and trust that the next step will reveal itself. Confides Tay: "I'm doing the best with what I have and I just let things unfold as they should."

BEYOND THE CANVAS

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That willingness to keep moving also shapes Tay's creative life today. In Malaysia, where he has limited space, he works on smaller canvases, often 12 inches square, using acrylics that dry quickly. His studio in New York's Tribeca neighbourhood gives him more room to work on a larger scale, leaving paintings on the wall for months before returning to them.

He continues to revisit unfinished pieces, changing colours and brushstrokes as his ideas evolve. Decades into his career, he remains open to the possibilities of a work in progress.

Away from the studio, another passion occupies his attention: watches. Tay has been collecting them for about 15 years, and his enthusiasm becomes evident as he describes the friendships and gatherings that have grown around the hobby.

Among collectors of Panerai, the Italian watchmaker known for its historic military timepieces, he helped bring an annual gathering to New York after years of events in Germany. One particularly coveted watch even prompted him to buy a flight ticket back to Singapore after spotting a fellow collector's message offering it for sale. Rather than leave the transaction to chance, he travelled back to meet the seller in person.

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When asked what he hopes people will remember him for, Tay turns not to his art or possessions, but to the difference he's been able to make in other people's lives.

In September 2025, he donated 118 limited-edition etchings to the Women's Aid Organisation (WAO), raising close to half a million ringgit for its work with women and children in need. He has also supported an orphanage.

More recently, while sorting through old papers, he rediscovered a folder documenting a scholarship he had funded in 1992 to help a printmaking student buy art materials.

Tay doesn't dwell on these gestures. Yet there's something quietly moving about the journey from a young man whose family pooled their resources to send him to America to an established artist helping another aspiring creative find their footing. Having once been given a chance himself, he has, in his own way, helped pass it on.

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As our conversation draws to a close, I think again of my cherished painting. I knew what it made me feel long before I knew anything about the man who created it. Now, having heard Tay speak about his father, about love expressed through small acts of care and about making the most of what life offers, I find myself looking at it somewhat differently.

Perhaps that's the gift of meeting an artist: not to solve the mystery of a painting, but to gain a deeper sense of the life behind it. The figures remain where they've always been, seated side by side, their story still their own. But I leave with a little more understanding of the man who brought them to life… and of the quiet magic that made me stop and look in the first place.