The Rise Above Podcast EP 5: Natia Lemay

Fine Artist & Social Activist Natia Lemay joins Bram Bains on this episode of The Rise Above Podcast. Natia talks about deciding to leave the corporate world to pursue her passion for Art; Natia shares her story and the inspiration behind her work - to inspire social change - and describes the influences that shape her work. Natia explains Art Culture by drawing parallels to Hip Hop & the Music Industry. 

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Interview Transcript

[00:01] Bram: Warning this episode of the rise above podcast does contain some coarse language. I would strongly advise if you have any children in the room with you to please stop listening and come back later when it's safe to do so hope you guys enjoy. Thank you.

You're now tuned in to the rise above podcast interviews with everyday people that are building a better life as we speak. For those building and business from scratch, climbing the corporate ladder, or simply following their dreams to rise above to the next level.

Welcome everybody to episode number five of the rise above podcast. Today, I'm being joined by a very special guest. A good friend of mine Natia Lemay. Natia is a mother. She's an artist. She's an activist. In the fall, Natia is going to be a student. She'll be attending the Yale Master of Fine Art program. Natia, how are you doing today? 

[01:16] Natia: Good. How are you?

[01:17] Bram: Doing great. Thank you for joining me. I really appreciate your time. It's a long weekend here and you've been generous with your time to connect and do this episode. Before we get into some of the questions, I'm going to ask you some icebreakers here, just to kind of get the ball rolling. Don't overthink anything. If you want to give simple answers, or if you want to elaborate on anything, feel free. The floor is yours.

[01:42] Natia: I will say, I didn't know it was a long weekend until this morning. Thanks for reiterating how stupid I am. I had no clue that Monday was a holiday. I had no idea. I'm like, why is everyone talking about what they're going to do on Monday? Don't people work on Monday? It was a moment. Okay, go ahead. Ice breakers. 

[02:05] Bram: All good. What is your favorite book?

[02:09] Natia: My favorite book right now is called the name of the wind. It's like a trilogy, but only two of the three have been written and I've been waiting 10 years for the third one. I've read the first one, like three, four times. It's a fantasy novel, but it's beautifully written. I will say my favorite thing about this book is that the main character as a musician and the way the author writes about music, it's like, you can hear the music while reading the book. It's like the most bizarre thing ever, but you can feel the emotion of the music while you're reading it. That's why I love that book, man. Depends on the decade, but I read a lot. 

[02:48] Bram: What is your favorite movie?

[02:51] Natia: Oh, the matrix always.

[02:54] Bram: What did you name your first car?

[02:57] Natia: I never named a car. Why is that a thing? I never named a car ever. I remember my best friend's first car. She named it Oreo because she was a white girl in the car was black. She was like a black of the outside and white on the inside. But that was the only time that I've ever met anyone that name their car. Yeah. It's weird.

[03:23] Bram: What would be the title of your autobiography?

[03:26] Natia: Wow. I don't know. That's a hard question. I have no idea. I can't answer that one. I don't know. My parents had a book written about them. It was called the stroll. Maybe it'd be like the stroll 2.0, I don't know. We do not live the same life. I don't think it'd be appropriate to be named after their book, but yeah, no answer.

[03:47] Bram: That's cool. I didn't know that about you, that your parents had a book called the stroll.

[03:53] Natia: I can tell you about it after if you want to know, but yeah continue. 

[03:57] Bram: Okay. What would be your super power and why?

[04:02] Natia: I have two answers for this. If I was to choose any superpower in the world and it's just like mine, for the fun of having a superpower, it would be time travel because then you could do all kinds of shit and like predict the future and come back and fix things. I think that would be dope. But if I was to personally based on like my skills have a super power, it'd probably be something along the lines of like, people listening. I could like use my platform and help elevate voices of others and like, be able to say things that people actually take it seriously and make change based on it instead of like how the world is now. Yeah, I think that's relevant.

[04:45] Bram: If you could choose any person from history to be your imaginary friend, who would it be and why?

[04:53] Natia: Oh, Tupac always. First off it'd be hilarious to walk around with tupac on my shoulder all the time. Yeah, he's a poet. He's an intellect. He made music 20 years ago that still is super relevant and important today. That just says so much about the character of a person. He's a revolutionary who was way ahead of his time I think. It would definitely be him a hundred percent.

[05:21] Bram: If you could instantly become an expert at something, what would it be and why? 

[05:27] Natia: Coding? Yeah. Cause it seems like a good skill. There's a few are projects that I've worked on that I thought would translate really cool to tech. I tried really hard to code the shit. It was a complete and utter failure. Very disappointing. If I could learn any skill it would be coding Yeah. I don't know how to code.

[05:50] Bram: What was your favorite school subject and what was your least favorite school subject?

[05:56] Natia: Least favorite school subject had to do with writing or reading. In school, I hated reading. I don't think I've read a whole book from cover to cover till I was like 25 and now I read like 25 to 30 a year, but my favorite subject was art. Outside of art, it was biology. I liked dissecting things.

[06:19] Bram: Would you rather explore outer space or the bottom of the ocean?

[06:27] Natia: I've never swam in the ocean. Like I've gone to the ocean and I'm like, I'm not going in there. I would rather go to space. The ocean scares me. I don't know what it is. The fact that we're not looking at the ocean tells me that there's something down there that they don't want us to know about. I'm definitely going to outer space. At least you can see long distances, you know what's coming for you. The ocean you can see in front of you. You have no idea what's creeping up behind you. That's freaky.

[06:54] Bram: Okay. Would you rather have $10 million or access to infinite knowledge?

[07:01] Natia: Oh, infinite knowledge. Money doesn't motivate me at all. With knowledge comes everything else.

[07:11] Bram: Nice. Okay. All right. That's the icebreakers. There's a couple of things in there that you mentioned that we'll kind of touch on through the rest of this conversation. Cause there's some interesting answers in there, which I want to pick your brain a little bit further, but before we get into that. I'll tell about how we met each other and then share your story. I mean, we first met, I think it was like at this point going on like nine or 10 years ago. Might be longer than that. It was at grey power insurance brokerage. I was in a training class. You were one of the mentors in there. One of the sales mentors. Essentially, you taught me how to sell insurance. 

Then as our careers kind of progressed, we both went different ways, but we always kind of kept orbiting around each other. I think there's three separate occasions after that where our careers intersected again. We just kind of stayed in touch throughout, which as a sidebar illustrates the importance of relationships for all the youngsters out there listening to this. Relationships are key in the corporate world. I'll just say that. But yeah, you taught me how to sell insurance and you actually got me into the high net worth space a few years later, which is where I'm currently at. 

At that point I was entering a position and you had already left the position and you decided to quit your job altogether and go into art school full time, which I thought was really, really interesting and admirable. We've talked about this many times offline as well and getting into that story, I'd love to hear about it from your perspective.

[08:51] Natia: Yeah. I think a lot of people know, like what you've explained, that's usually how I explain it to people. I was in the corporate world for a long time. I just found that there was just so many things that I disagreed with personally on like a value and morals basis. I grew up really poor. Like I grew up in the hood. Both my parents were drug addicts and drug dealers and like I've done all kinds of things to survive over the years. Had a kid at 19. Was on my own and trying to navigate life as best as possible. My life was really always about survival. 

Every choice I made was out of necessity instead of wants or what I thought would actually fulfill me as an individual person. When I got into the corporate world, it's like you grow up in this world thinking that you need to be successful. You need to have, house with white picket fence and 2.5 children and like a corporate job that you put a suit on every day and go to work, you sit at your desk. That was my idea of success when I was in my early twenties. When I rose up the ladder, when we first met and all the other places that our paths have crossed, I was really locked into that very like Western idea of success, but it wasn't satisfying. Insurance is a very money centered industry, right. It's all about connections is all about who you know. It's all about how you present yourself, how good you are at making people feel comfortable with you and building reputations to create a client base. It just becomes a constant circle.

But for me, I thought it was authentically not who I was. I couldn't see. I just had a problem watching millionaires bitch about a thousand dollars on an insurance premium or cry about their 21 Lamborghinis and how much they were paying for them. I'm like, there are starving people out there. Like I grew up starving and you're crying about Lamborghini. Like it just to me was just like, I couldn't, I just couldn't deal with it anymore. I always painted. My dad was an artist who was a stone sculptor. My grandfather used to build model ships. My brother is tattoo artist. Like my family there's always been that creative gene, but it was never something that I saw as a way to become, like, to make a business off or a career out of until I got to that point where I'm like, I'm not going to live for survival and more. I'm not going to do what society tells me is the appropriate thing for me to do because that's the world that we're living in. I'm going to do something that fulfills me in inside and out and create income off of that and create a life off of that. 

I just had enough one day. I was working and I'm like, I can't do this anymore. I'm applying to art school. I don't know if I'll get in. Now, mind you, like, I barely graduated high school. I had a baby really young, so my life was already filled with all this stuff. Then I got the acceptance letter into OCAD. I quit my job instantly. As soon as I got it. I'm like, here's my notice. I gave them six months notice. I close all my accounts because I had a lot of them and transferred them all over to the new person and walked away and haven't looked back since. Best decision I ever made.

[12:14] Bram: Nice. I mean, you're definitely on a different trajectory altogether now. I mean, the success that you've achieved after that has been amazing. Would you call that the moment where it was red pill or blue pill?

[12:28] Natia: That's the matrix moment. It's like, do I keep going down this path and stay within the matrix or do I see how far the rabbit hole really goes? That's what it was. Like going into art is like, we're conditioned to think that creatives and whether that be music painting, it doesn't matter what kind of creative industry that it's almost impossible to be successful off of it. Like they tell us like, oh, you're going to die a starving artist. Like that's the saying of starving artists. If you have a business mindset, if you already have that foundation of understanding how important networking connection building is and making yourself be the first person that people think of. 

Like, that was always my strategy. Even when I worked in insurance, it's like, I'm gonna make sure that my people hear me. They hear my voice. The next time an opportunity comes up, they're like, Natia would be good for that. I carried that right over into art and that's why I've been able to be successful is because when opportunities, when shows come up, when curation office movies come up I'm the one a lot of people think of. But yeah, it was definitely the red pill, blue pill moment where I was just like, I can't. I'm like, I can't do this. We're going to see what this other one does. I have no idea where it's going, but it's not where I am because this does not feel right. 

[13:52] Bram: Nice. Okay. Did you wanted to go into our school or was that based on your history at that time and being around arts? Were you actually practicing art as well yourself? Or were there any other options for you or was it always going to be art?

[14:06] Natia: That's a good question. There were always other options. Again, the other options that most of us kids have though, I'm going to be a doctor and I want to do be a lawyer, like all these very mainstream safe choices. But I made the choice for art because throughout all of my life whenever shit was going down and like things were bad and things were hard, art was like a form of therapy for me. I would find paints like when I was, when I had my daughter and we were living like in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, when I first moved to Toronto with like a suitcase and a purse, that's all I came with, my kid. I would find buckets of paint and like little jars of Dollarama, paint in dumpsters.

I'd like go around dumpsters and find old backs of panels from dressers, the wood panels and dressers. I just take them inside and I just paint on them. Not that I expected anyone to ever see them. It was never a point of having people see them. It was more of like the meditative act of putting the brush and the paint on the structure and that's all it was. I never saw it as a real thing. I saw it as like, this is my relaxing time. I'm just going to relax and paint this canvas and no one will ever see the canvas. I'll throw it out when I'm done, but I'm just going to do it. But I realized that brought me so much joy and safety and it was something that was consistent throughout my life.

It was something that made me feel better. Like it brought me to a place where I just felt at peace. I just threw caution to the wind. I had to put my portfolio together in six months. I had to paint like 10 pieces. There's been six months to apply to OCAD because I threw everything away as I made it. People would ask me for commissions. I do paintings for people as I came up, but it was nothing serious. But yeah. I've always painted. Art is kind of, I don't know, it's in my blood, I guess.

[16:12] Bram: Through the process like when you're painting, where do you draw your inspiration from?

[16:16] Natia: This is one of the most common questions I get because people have no idea how my process works. My process is really unconventional. Like a lot of artists do sketches and studies and they like, draw everything out on a piece of paper first, what they want the painting to look like or make a collage. I don't do any of that. I can't preplan any paintings, like even the one in the background. I can't preplan it. I just, usually I end up reading, I'll read a book, I'll do some, like, I love history. my minor is in sociology. So like human behavior and a study of human behavior. I just like, I read and I find like one sentence that I like find really interesting. 

It'll be often based on a quote and then I'll take that quote. It'll just like sit in the back of my mind. I experiment with materials a lot. I collect random objects and like plastic and like plaster and stone and just like really weird things and just fiddle. Like, even today I've been molding new pieces of plastic that I've recycled. I just play with it until all of a sudden like one minute I'm doing something with my hands and the next minute, just like a light goes on and I'm like, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Then when I start painting, I like put up the canvas and I literally just paint a brush and I do a rough shape and then start going.

If I'm working on something thing very specific, - I mostly do figurative artwork, like painting people of color - and I need a pose that I can't make up off the top of my head, I'll just like pose myself and take a photo of myself and use that as reference for like size and like just motion. But yeah, outside of that, it's just like I wing it. I totally wing it. When I do commissions, people send me like six or seven pictures of themselves and I like collage them mentally together to make like a family picture.  I'm like, that's what I'm gonna paint. It just pops into my head. I have no idea. It's weird. 

[18:11] Bram: No, that's pretty cool. I respect that. It's kind of like part process, but then part freestyle. You kind of balance both of those elements together, and then you create something.

[18:21] Natia: I think it's a lot of intuition too. It's trusting yourself. Like anything, if you're making a decision that's informed and if you believe that you have the skill to be able to do it, then it will be successful. It's as soon as you start doubting yourself, no matter what you're doing, whether it's being in the corporate world or like, playing basketball, right. I played basketball for like 15 years. You start like second guessing things that you're doing, then you start making mistakes. Then you start like questioning your movements where you're supposed to be, where the brush is supposed to be on the canvas. Who you're supposed to talk to. That's when you falter. 

You just got to use your intuition, take your feelings, do all those things and just plow through it and stop when you feel like you're done. That's where I mess up things. Sometimes I just keep going. Sometimes I go too far and I'm like, oh, I ruined that. Oh, I can't back it up now. Then I just start over. I do multiple things over and over again. I'll have one painting that I'll start and I'll hate it and I'll just start the whole piece over again. Scrape the canvas and start the whole thing over again multiple times until it looks exactly how I want it to look.

[19:29] Bram: Wow. Interesting. Yeah, that was going to be the next question I was going to ask you, if you're painting and if you can stop and like go from there, if you do something you don't like, or if you have to start all over again. 

[19:40] Natia: It depends on how far. Because I paint in oil. Oil takes like weeks to dry, if not months. When I'm paint in oil, like I have more than enough time to erase and start over. When I paint an acrylic or if I'm working on sculpture and stuff, then there is not really that same room for error. You literally got to scrape and start over from scratch. 

[20:05] Bram: Okay, cool. Do you listen to music when you're painting?

[20:07] Natia: No.

[20:09] Bram: No? Just silence?

[20:11] Natia: No, I'd go insane. I do really weird shit. I can't listen to music because then I get too picky. Cause like if it's not the right song with the right tempo, cause I love music. Music is life. Like I absolutely love it. It's just the part of who I am. If it's a song that just doesn't like, if it's too lyrical, then I'll be listening to the words instead of focusing on the painting. I can't listen to podcasts or like audio books because I get too into the audio book. So I watch the same TV shows that I've watched like 20 times over again. I'll put on in the background like the office. I've watched the office like 26 times. It's just because I don't have to look at the screen. Right. Like even the matrix I'll put the matrix on in the background. I don't have to watch it. I can just listen and know exactly what scenes are coming up and I'll have to think about that. It's just background noise and then I can go ahead and get into the work. 

[21:10] Bram: What's your favorite character on the office? 

[21:14] Natia: Michael Scott is awesome. But Dwight is my number two. He kills me bad. My favorite opening [inaudible 21:22] Asian Jim. You remember that one where like they replaced Jim with an Asian guy and Dwight's like, but you're not Asian. He's like, oh, it's going to be pronouncing color, like a family photo of an Asian family. Dwight's like, what the hell is happening? You haven't seen that episode with the Asian opening? Dwight and Jim, just their dynamic. I just love it too much. It's just like a love hate thing. The pranks just kill me. I love that show.

[21:51] Bram: Yeah. Legendary show. Okay. One thing I wanted to ask you, pick your brain about this. Cause you mentioned, interestingly enough, you mentioned coding as something that you would try to become an expert at. Are you familiar with like NFTs and the whole NFT movement? What does that mean for you as an artist? To what extent can you explain what that's going to do to change the industry? 

[22:16] Natia: I don't think it's going to change the fine art industry a lot. I honestly don't think NFCS are going to be a long-lasting thing. I don't, I think it was a sad thing. Like, Banksy where he shredded the piece of artwork and the auction house, it became like this, oh my God, he shredded his own art or the guy that taped the banana on the wall at the biannual in Miami. Did you see that he literally just duct tape the banana on the wall, it sold for like $28 million. A fucking duct tape, banana. I was like, what is happening? I don't know if that's an exact figure, but it was a lot of like, it was a ridiculous amount of money. I think it's like that new thing that people are experimenting with. Do you know how NFTs work?

[23:12] Bram: At a very high level, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but at a very high level for artists, what, what I understand it to be is using like the blockchain, anytime that you sell a piece and it sells again to somebody else. Anytime it transfers hands, the way that the coding and that works is that part of the money commission per se, is always going to get paid back to the artist. 

[23:37] Natia: Yeah. That's right. That's one of the pros of having NFTs for artists. The issue is that NFTs are always going to be only digital images. Like it's only created digitally and the owner of it owns that original digital docuor JPEG or whatever it is, PNG. But they're still all over the internet. You're still going to see the image everywhere. It's similar, like Mona Lisa, right? There's only one original Mona Lisa, but you can Google a picture of Mona Lisa everywhere. You can go and see Mona Lisa whenever, like, if you're at the loo, you can go see Lisa. I don't think that in the fine art world, possession is what makes money. It's the fact that someone can say in their house that they own that painting and no one else can see it unless you give permission to see it.

It's funny because I complained about leaving insurance because of like super rich people that are like cody todyand art is just as bad. It's like that idea of like it's a commodity. I own it. You can't touch it. You can't see it. It's only mine, which is also why I think the banana taped to the wall made so much money because that one person owned it and no one can ever see it or own it ever again because of banana rotted and it's gone. It's that knowing that you were the one person to have that one thing. Now with NFT the pro, is that the artist is going to get paid for every transaction. Cause right now in art, it doesn't work like that. You will sell the painting and then it'll go, that person will sell it in auction.

Only that person will make the profit off of it because they are the owner of it. It no longer is yours, but I don't think that it's going to blow up the way people think it's going to really blow up. Like, I think artists want it to work, but it's purely digital. Art is more than an image. Art is a feeling. Art is an object. Art can do multiple things. When we reduce it down to only a visual picture, then we're losing so many aspects of art that makes art important, especially when it comes to like activism and change making. I'm not too worried about NFTs, but here's what it is. Getting someone to pay for something that everyone in the world can have is the hard part. Everybody can have it. It;s just being able to say, I have this ticket that I own the original, like, I don't know.

I don't know. It's a thing, it's going around. People are talking about it a lot, but in the artist world, we're not really as interested in it as the miners are and the people that work where you about cryptocurrency, those are the ones that see the value in these more than artists do. It might turn into something that's like, the Instagram artists that aren't real artists, they just paint. Cause I know it'll blow up on Instagram and they'll have millions of followers. It's going to be like, I feel like it's going to be that thing where there's going to be those super basic graphic drawings, that don't really give a shit they just do it because they know they can profit off of it. That's going to be the NFT thing. That's what I think. I don't know if I'm right. We'll see. 

[26:38] Bram: Different industry altogether. So it's like a different culture altogether you could say versus like traditional fine art, like going through like the Sotheby's and the auction houses and the museums and all that two different worlds.

[26:50] Natia: Yeah. There's multiple different layers in the art world. I think a lot of people think it's just the one stream, but it's really not. There's commercial artists that work on paintings that go in banks and go on like, in TV sets and do like abstract, basic things. Then there's like fine artists that do artwork that they know sells. It's still good. Like it's good quality, super talented artwork, but they know what sells. They're going to paint exactly what they know is going to make them money. Then there's activist art, which is a little bit different. It's more political. They don't do what society wants them to do an they're often not in mainstream and like mainstream institutions, they're more underground artists. 

It's like hip hop, right? Like there's just like rap music. There's like the mainstream rappers that like make garbage trap rap. They just mumble on the whole track. Then they make millions of dollars. Then there's the underground artists. Like, even the immortal techniques that have been out for forever that make deep thoughtful lyrics, but don't get the hype because they're not talking about what mainstream society wants to hear. Art that exact same way. Like you could break it down just the way you can break down the categories of rap music. It's an easy way to put it, but I'm sure you'll understand.

[28:07] Bram: That's a great perspective. It makes more sense to me when you use that analogy for sure. I'm trying to learn and understand more of like art culture in the world, Like the business side of things. One thing that I'm trying to understand, and I'd like to get your perspective on it is, you've got like the auctions, you've got the institutions and so forth, and there's a group of artists that are selected. What is the criteria? What is it that they're looking at? What is it about the work? Because I mean, if we're comparing it to, the music thing where you've got like the industry will take someone in and blow them up versus, you've got more talented people that may not get access to that world. In art, what is it?

[29:02] Natia: The exact same thing. I'm gonna get super political here for a minute, if we think about the world we live in, we live in a capitalist society. We think about who owns these corporations. Like not just race wise, but motivation-wise, there are people that their number one intent is to make money, make profit. Then when we really consider who controls, like when we're thinking of music who controls distribution, who controls radio plays, like they're going to promote stuff, like who listens to it. We know that the people that buy like music, again, the people that buy albums, the people that pay for music are not often like lower class black and brown people. 

We don't usually have disposable income to go to concerts, to go to shows, to buy hoodies, to buy swag, to like to do all that stuff. We download illegally. We streamall the shit that we need to do to get the content. But the people that buy the music are the middle class, upper class people. Music record labels that are money motivated are trying to go open artists. They're considering which one of these artists will target that group, that middle-class group the best. That's who they choose to promote because super deep thinkers and even J Cole perfect example, he is a lyricist to the core. He makes super political music and he's so talented, but he hasn't blown up to the level of like the Drake tab. Like, to me, it blows my mind. Cause I'm like, why wouldn't you want to hear that? But he says shit that makes that group of people, that middle upper-class group of people that are buying the content uncomfortable, because he's not saying the things that they're used to talking about drugs and money and parties and stuff. Talking about politics and like black lives matter.

Art is the exact same thing. The people that get chosen into these auction houses and the people that get chosen to do these big shows or like blow up on Instagram are usually the ones that are making safe bets. Every once in a while, there will be that artist that comes around that challenges, everything, and everyone will get behind them because they're doing something that hasn't been done before and they can't ignore it. Those are the artists that, to me, that I look up to. It's the same thing. Those artists that make so much noise that they can't be ignored the institutions have no choice, but to acknowledge them because they lose their legitimacy as a leading institution, if they don't also back that artist that the rest of the art society backs.

It's like, everyone's saying, this person is amazing. Why aren't you auctioning their paintings? They're going to look stupid for saying, no, they're not amazing. They have so much power to a certain extent, but once all the people rally underneath, then it's hard to ignore it. It's how society operates. That's what we live in all the time. One person makes the decision and we usually don't fight it until everybody speaks up and fights against it. Then we get hurt. For me I've made very political artwork. The paintings I make just by the fact that they have black figures in it is a political thing, because no matter what I paint, people, non-black people will 90 percent of the time misread my intention.

Like even if it's just a family sitting, chilling on the couch, they're going to think there's a super deep like, oh, it's like, they just overcame like a drug battle. Like, I don't know what they're thinking. Right. Even because of where I came from, they're going to assume that I'm talking about always like my own personal shit that I've experienced. It's a hard thing me painting black people who's super political. Me not painting people they know or recognize makes them uncomfortable. My last thesis project, I burned a history book that I spent a year and a half researching and putting together. That made people uncomfortable because they're like, we can't see it. We can't own it. Nobody can buy it. I'm like, I didn't make it as a thing to be bought. I made it as a tool to prove a point that you can commodify my skill and my labor and profit off of my work.

But going to an institution like Yale and being accepted by them is a huge thing because they know that I'm making this super political work and they're backing it. They're saying, we're going to put the stamp of approval on you. If you go into an institution, they can't say this isn't important because we've already, it's like I said, that one person is like, nope, this is good. You know, I'm getting that little group of people saying, this is what you need to look at. It's like anything else, man. It's like in people. You gotta be good at people.

Like you have to get to people, but yeah. Artists are just like, anything else.

[33:53] Bram: All it takes gatekeepers, all that stuff. But it seems like when you get the power of the people behind you, I mean, it raises you up to the next level, right? I mean, if like you said that many voices, it can't be ignored. They have to kind of accept it. 

[34:06] Natia: Even if they hate you, it's the same thing, right? Just like in rap music, if they hate you, they're still talking about you. If you make them uncomfortable, they're still talking about you. You're making them feel something and that's all that matters. In my version of the real art world, I was like the real art world. Cause like what I care about, that's my real art world. I like those things. I like people that make you feel shit, make you uncomfortable. Those are the only opinions that I really care about. 

[34:36] Bram: Who are some of the artists that you have your eyes on? Like who are, who are some of the people that influenced you?

[34:45] Natia: It's always a hard question. I don't want to seem like a dick. That's always the thing. Like oh I'm an asshole. I will say this. I'm very, well-researched on a lot of the black and indigenous artists that came before me. I did that intentionally to see what strategies they were using and what paths they were going in. I felt that most black and indigenous artists that are out there are using specific tropes and iconography.  Like their paintings are for white people.

I'll use another analogy. Cause it's easier for me to explain the art when I use analogies. It's like, when you watch the black movie, like 12 years of slave, how many black people do you know, actually watch that movie. Like I didn't watch that movie. I'm not trying to watch the trauma of my ancestors on the screen. Like how many black people have you seen watch like, what's that new show that was on prime. That was like the black family getting beat up in the south. There's all these movies that make propaganda out of the black experience.

Like boys in the hood. Perfect example. Like we all watched that when we were kids, but it's like, I grew up in that so like I didn't enjoy watching shit that I was living on screen. Like it didn't make me feel any better. I don't think that they make those things for black people. I found a lot of the big black and indigenous artists out there are doing the same kind of thing. Like they're making it for white people. They're not making it for our people. They're making it because they know that those powers that be, the owners of the galleries. This has been proven with statistics, like 93% of gallery owners in Toronto are white because it makes them feel like they're reconnecting with the community they don't know. 

That's the stuff that they're familiar with. Cause that's what seen on TV. They're not used to seeing the normal, like executive like black woman, lawyer, that's running her industry. Like that's not a normal thing for them seeing on TV. A lot of the artists, I find that they're not making those challenging, and those hard paintings that make other people feel comfortable. Now it might just be that's at the stage of their like maybe that's just what they're interested in.

I don't know. I've never talked to them. I don't really know, but I find it disappointing. Like I really do. Cause I'm like, I feel like you're just doing what you know will sell. I feel like that's a safe bet. Like if I painted my mom who was a crack head smoking crack, like people would be like, oh, it's so emotional. That's your mother? I can't believe you went through that. Like that's so traumatic and they probably connect with it because they feel something. But that's not for me. I'm not painting that for me because I've already lived it. 

Why would I put it down on a piece of canvas when it's already my experience? You know what I mean? Like it's not helping anybody else. Maybe it's making people feel less alone, but it's not going to be commodified in that way. It's going to become something else. Something that I didn't intend it to be. But the artists that I really love are mostly dead. Adrian Piper, she was a mixed-race woman and she was a boss, man. She got mad. Same thing that I'm talking about. She got mad at the industry because they only wanted to show her pieces that talked about blackness. 

Even though she was half white, like me, like I'm white and indigenous, but it's like, people want to hear me talk about blackness. She did a series of portraits where she painted herself in like multiple different races. Then she would go into like go into galleries and refuse to talk to anybody about her work. She's like, I'm not telling you what it's about. I'm not explaining myself to any of you.

People really hated her. Like the black community thought she was like turning her back on everyone. But her point was, is that you're not going to make me only my identity. You're not going to make me only my pain and only my trauma. You're not going to sell my trauma to other people to profit off of it. I refuse to participate in that world. I love her for that. There's another artist Stanley Brown. He was a conceptual artist, again, a black artist. He did weird shit, like really weird. Like he would go around and ask people for directions and for them to sketch the directions in a book and just like collected drawings from random people in the street. 

His work is like a series of random drawings from random people, just talking about the human experience overall. But the cool thing about him is he also refused to acknowledge his race. There was only one picture of him ever taken that confirmed he was black because he knew that if he was black, he would be forced to make certain kinds of artwork in the art world. Especially during the seventies, when he was in the sixties and seventies, he refused it. He was like, I'm just not going to let anyone know what my race is and make the shit that I want. I really admire them because they were doing things that made people feel uncomfortable. It made our own community feel uncomfortable. I think that's where we need to be now is to start making us uncomfortable, so we get up and fight for change because we're doing a lot, but we could be doing more.

Living artists, there's not very many. Like my peers, I have Charlotte, Charlotte Haley, she's a painter. She does phenomenal work. Claire, [inaudible 40:03] she's an Asian Canadian artist. She did a series of porcelain paintings on like eggplants and gender. Like on actual vegetables and then they just rotted because she's like the same thing, the fetishization of Asian women. When you're from an Asian community, it's like, you're exoticized as a woman immediately. She's like, I'm not going to allow that to happen by painting things that I know will sell and become a commodity. They're like eggplants, which look like penises and like painted on them and just watch them like turn into mold and knew that no one can take it.

No one would own that piece of her that she made. Yeah, I thought it was beautiful, but yeah, that's who I admire, not the big name, people that a lot of people assume I would.

[40:50] Bram: That's cool. That's interesting. I like to hear that perspective though, especially from you. Cause I would say you're a respected voice in this community, given your success and the trajectory that you're on and that Yale co-sign. I mean, that definitely means something too. Just to pull back a little bit, so painting on eggplants and then it rotting away. What is the art there? Why? Not being a shit disturber or anything, but is that like you take a picture of it fresh and then take pictures of it as it rots away and that's the art? Yeah. It's more like you create something and then you photograph it and then it's the story of that. Then it's gone and no one can have it again. 

[41:36] Natia: Exactly. That's conceptual art. I'm sure you've seen really stupid things. You're like, how was that art. Like that doesn't make any sense. Just chalk it up to conceptual art. It's not about the object. Conceptual art can be defined, like it's not about the object of the material or the art making or anything like that. It's about the idea behind it. The actual outcome does not matter. It's just the idea and your concept and then that's what the art is. It takes art out of the material world and brings it into the intellectual world. So it's like just my thought becomes art and that's to me what it is to be an artist. You don't have to make shit to be an artist. You know what I mean? Like you don't  have to have a business to be a business person. You can still think like a business person all the time.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you have a business right now just means that that's something that you are, you have that mentality, that hustler's mentality. And it's the same thing. That's what conceptual art is. It's all about the idea. 

[42:42] Bram: I didn't know that. You taught me that today. That helps make a lot more sense out of some things. Appreciate that.

[42:47] Natia: Well, when I first started in art, I remember a class and this guy was talking about a girl that sat in a room, eating a brick of chocolate for like three days, just sat there eating chocolate. I was like, what the fuck is this? Then another guy that just filled a room with balloons and I'm like, what is going on? Like, I'm not here to learn how to fill rooms with balloons. But now that I'm like, as deep as I am and I've had like, I don't know, a bunch of shows and I've curated a bunch of shows. It makes sense to me because it's like how do we challenge the system using the tools made by the system? Do what I mean? Like how do you do something that's supposed to be outside of something when you're only using what they've given you, you can't, it's impossible. 

That's why conceptual art to me is so interesting. Cause it's like, you're not using the tools that they want you to use to make something new. That's really the only way that you can make new shit.

[43:45] Bram: I wanted to ask you, so I was looking at your website and some of the artwork that you had there. I saw you did a self portrait in 2018 and then you did another one there in 2020. The first one it's you sitting there and there's like flowers and whatnot. Like a wall of flowers behind you. The second one that you did, it looks like you're sitting on a stool and there's like elements in it of like your hand is black and white. I believe like it's all, it's all white. It's not in color. It looks like you're, you're naked too. Going from one to the other, this being a self portrait, how you're drawing yourself. What was the change from 2018 to 2020 that you went through? How did you try to illustrate that in your self portrait?

[44:44] Natia: Yeah. That's a really good question. Both of them are the same, but different. The flowers in the background of this first one,  when I got the first one, I did it right after I got my ancestry DNA done. I don't know if you've ever done an ancestry DNA, but that shit changes like every six months, like the first time you get it, it's like you're 29. I don't know about normal people, but I was like 36 different things. Then it isolates down a little bit more. Then you're 16 different countries, eight different countries. What I did in that one, my interest in identity, in my heritage and my ancestry stemmed from a place of hurt because of the way I grew up.

My grandmother, she grew up on the same plantation that her great, great grandmother picked cotton on the south. My great grandfather, stowed away on a ship to get here from the Dutch West Indies. My great, great great-grandfather, this is all on my paternal side, because there's multiple great great grandfathers. One came to the American revolutionary war and has been in Canada since like the 1700s. My ancestry in Canada and America and through the slave trade goes really, really far back. But I noticed like it doesn't matter how far back it was. 

My family has been fighting the same battle for the last like hundreds of years. Like I have letters from my great uncle that he wrote to like the Toronto star complaining about how his white neighbors were calling him racist things and telling him that black people should go back to where they came. He's talking about how like all of us black people are only trying to make ourselves better. I have an ancestor that did work with Nelson Mandela. It's like, we were always doing the same battle for recognition and for equality and equity amongst other people. What really disturbed me was the fact that my father, because of the crack epidemic in the eighties, we all heard the story. Like the crack, that was where I came from. 

My grandmother's life was to horrifying being from where she came from. She passed those traits down to her children. My grandfather had a terrible life dealing with racism in Canada for all the decades that he did coming from, all that epigenetic. Do you know what epigenetic is? It's when like trauma and stuff gets passed through DNA into our ancestors. Like all the that my family has been through then eventually came to my parents.

They were drug addicts because crack entered the thing. They became drug addicts. My father was illiterate. My mom didn't pass grade eight. She ran away from home. Like, it's just like, I sat there and I'm like, I'm the product of everything that came before me. My identity was like summed up in how society has created this oppressive force towards black and indigenous people. It was the result of me and my childhood and like all the trauma and pain that I experienced, like my accident that I had when I was a year old, like all of those things came from everything that came before. 

When I did my first self-portrait, when I was getting my ancestry, I was trying to really figure out more about myself and like what brought me to be here in this place on this starting ground. Like what were the causes that made me start off in the worst possible position in society in Canada? Why? We've been here for so long. There's no reason why I have to start off so shitty. Like I should have had any step up from anything, even a house or,[inaudible 48:19] my dad couldn't read a book like easiest, basic shit. I was looking at my ancestry. The background is actually the flowers from each of the countries that my ancestry came from.

I took the percentage and I put that percentage of flowers in the background. It was me sitting there in a very like calm, like just like chill, just thinking, like thinking manner, contemplating where I came from and how it brought me to be in that position sitting where I was. How that transitioned to 2020 is that I did more research. Then as I did more research, I became more hurt and it became more important for me, not only to talk about what came before me, but how that impacted me as an individual. 

When the second one, it has both black and white and things in completing complete because I'm still working on my identity. I'm still battling those two narratives of myself, of being mixed race. It was the first time I painted my scars. Just so everyone knows I was in an accident when I was a year old. My mother was a drug addict. As I mentioned, she put me in my brother in a bathtub. I was one, he was two, so she could shoot up. Bathtub had no water in it. It was just an empty tub. Cause she thought we can't run around the house if we're locked in the bathtub.

Unfortunately my brother turned on the water. Of course he's two, it was an accident. He was able to climb out of the tub. I couldn't yet walk properly. I was trapped in the tub. As it's filling up with boiling hot water, this was in Toronto, before they had the temperature gauges on hot water tanks. It came out like scalding hot. Nobody really knows how long I was in the tub for, but eventually my brother woke my mother up. She came out, picked me up out of the tub and wiped all the skin off of my legs. Cause it was pretty much just like decimated.

Since then I've had like 36 surgeries, reconstructive surgeries to like try to put it back together. The doctors thought I would never walk again. Like it was all the shit, not to mention also dealing with drug addict parents and poverty and like all of that, other, all the other stuff that comes along with it. But in that second painting, it was important for me to show the results of all the systemic racism, all of the bad choices my parents made. All of the obstacles that they had to overcome. How difficult it is to fight addiction. How difficult it is to keep going when you feel as if there's nothing for you. I think that's something my dad mentioned all the time is that, he didn't think he had any other choice, but to sell drugs.

Because he couldn't read, he couldn't write. He was six foot four and he was a huge black dude and everyone was terrified of him. Being a pimp was the easiest job for him because like it fit him perfectly. The second one was really just like, there are people living today that are the direct result of the issues that we talk about, that need to be changed in Canadian society. A lot of people don't acknowledge that Canada is racist. A lot of people like, oh, it's not that bad, but I'm like, I am a direct result. Like I can literally trace every obstacle that my family had that made it not easy for them to make a good decision. Then especially if you don't know good decisions. Like if you don't know what the right thing to choose is you're going to make the same wrong choices over and over again. 

Yeah, so painting was like the incompleteness of me and my identity and my search for finding. Which is why some of it's incomplete the two colors about battling each other, which is my two sides. But then, exposing that raw portion of myself, that's still very open and very hurt. That's, everything had to come to be the way that it did. My life sucked as a kid. Things were horrible, but yeah, you gottaroll with it. Now that's my activist. Like that's why I have this drive for activism. Because like, I understand on a deeper level how over policing, how the prison industrial complex affects black people how, like my father died in the hospital from COVID, in Winnipeg.

I questioned did that have anything to do with him being a black man and want to pick hospitals? There's all of these things. That's why I pursue activism because I firsthand know the results of all of these things that go on in this world that people refuse to acknowledge. Yeah that's the difference between the two. And we'll see, in none other two years I might do another self portrait. They'll probably be completely different. Maybe it will be completed. I don't know.

[52:58] Bram: Hey, there's definitely a lot of depth there to the art for sure. I mean, that's incredible and who knows two years, and then two years after that, it might change again, like you said, as you continue to learn and grow and evolve, I guess that reflects in the work that you're doing. Especially something as important and significant for yourself as a self-portrait. That's interesting to hear from your perspective. That's pretty cool. 

[53:27] Natia: I don't know if people read it that way, but who cares? I don't know. Yeah, it's weird. It is what it is. 

[53:34] Bram: Okay. What kind of music are you listening to these days? You mentioned that you would have Tupac there with you? Do you listen to a lot of Tupac music or is there any other artists that inspire you or touch you the same way that Tupac did? If not, I mean, who or what is it that you listen to today? What's on your rotation?

[53:56] Natia: Right now the only thing I've been listening to as the new J Cole album, because like I have to. I feel obligated at this point. I've been following him since day one. Since the mix tapes came out, I've been to all of his concerts, like some loyalty thing by now, but Kendrick Lamar, for sure, the dude is like super dope. I'm going to be honest. There's not a lot of new rappers that I like. I'm not a fan of Drake. People hate it when I say that because I live in Toronto, but it's the reality of my life. But other than that, yeah, J Cole, Kendrick Lamar. I listen to a lot of RnB. So like SIR, I don't know if that's how you spell it. Say it, sir. All those dudes like RnB right now, I think is killing the game.

Rap is not doing it. RnB is like off the charts, but my playlist always reverts back to old school. Like Dr. Dre, Eminem, [inaudible 54:43] Nas, Jay Z, Biggie, Tupac. Like that's just always the classics. Like my kids get mad at me cause they're like, why do you keep playing this stuff? I'm like it's the only good music. What am I supposed to do? But my son [inaudible 54:58] so that's great. I'm teaching them the classics and but it's funny. Cause like I'll pause songs and I'll be like, did you hear that line? Did you hear what he said? I'm one of those moms. It's funny. They probably hate me for it. But they'll love me when they're older. Yeah so classics, classics, right. Have you listened to the new J Cole album?

[55:24] Bram: Yeah. I'm pumping, applying pressure. That's the one I like.

[55:27] Natia: Pride is the devil is my favorite right now. I think that he threw in like so much flavor in that old album that reminds me of like early two thousands hip hop. Like there's even having a Cameron on audio and when I heard his voice, I was like, pinaudible 55:44]  Yeah, but hearing Cameron's voice it just feels good, right?

[55:53] Bram: Yeah. That was a nice little Easter egg in there for sure. Throw back there. Kendrick Lamar. What's your favorite album of his? 

[56:00] Natia: [inaudible] butterfly. 

[56:02] Bram: Yup. I figured, I thought so because of the Tupac references on there. Mortal men. Yeah. Yep. I listened to that album late. I listened to it last year and I think that's why like three, four years after it came out. But I caught that one late and mortal man is the highlight on that one for me, for sure. The way that they created that crazy.

[56:28] Natia: After that I started playing songs all the way until they skip to the next one themselves because like, I don't want to miss it. Cause I think the first few times I listened to mortal men, I didn't catch the endings. I was just skipped it because I'm like, I don't want to hear the outro. Like nobody cares. Yeah. The interview though was like, so good. But even the shit Tupac says in that, is like grounds in a competence swallow you low. Like it's just so beautiful, man. That dude's brave is just different.

[56:57] Bram: Definitely. My wife, she is obsessed with Tupac. She's born on the same day, June 16th Gemini. That's who I got that painting for from you. It was for her.

[57:09] Natia: She has good taste. She has good taste

[57:12] Bram: For sure. 100%. I don't want to keep you too long. We could talk for hours for sure. Every time I speak to you, I feel like always learn something, which is amazing. I definitely appreciate that. Where can people check out your work or how can anybody get in touch with you? If anybody wants to make a purchase, how can people contact you?

[57:38] Natia: Best bet is to go to Instagram. Natia Lemay Art. It's the easiest way. It's the only thing I respond to. I haven't updated my website in forever. Yeah. Commission requests, all that stuff. It's better to just go through my Instagram, hit me up there. At least I get the notifications. I'm really bad at responding. Any other form of notification I probably won't look at it right away. Yeah, Instagram is the best way, but I'm not good at posting, so not all of my stuff is on my Instagram. I keep a lot of in my pockets. Just because I like to keep things to myself. I'm very open, but I'm also very personal. Yeah, but that's the best way to reach out.

[58:20] Bram: You're such an artist, man. You're such an artist. This is like meant for you. When you pivoted, when you decided to quit your job, go to art school, it seems like you fell right into the right alley of your passion. To see that you're on this trajectory and to be doing your masters now and to be getting that co-sign from Yale, big things. Anybody listening, you guys, I would recommend get those purchases in before the price goes up because the price is most definitely going to go up. That's for sure. Natia, thank you again for your time. Anybody that wants to check out Natia's work, Instagram @natialemayart. This was episode number five of the rise above podcast. Be sure to subscribe, share it with a friend, share it with someone that you think it may benefit and until next time have a great day.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the rise above podcast. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes, leave a review and share with a friend who would love to hear this episode. This was the rise above podcast.