For the cover of Motif’s Fall Guide, painter and muralist Nicholas “Niko” Tolentino of Cranston drew inspiration from his childhood days, he relates in an interview at White Electric Coffee Co-Op in Providence.
Roger Williams Park in PVD was practically in his backyard. He loved to jump a fence and get to the gazebo behind the Casino. “Its ceiling made it an excellent echo chamber,” he recalls. “So whenever I went there, I stood in the middle of it and shouted, ‘Echo!’”
Done in his signature impressionistic style, the cover painting puts the gazebo center stage, surrounded by leaves in all their autumnal glory and swirling blues of water and sky. A woman sits reading a book, while a man and another woman with closed eyes inhale deeply to enjoy all the aromas of fall.
The cover showcases the artist’s love of vibrant colors, as well as his love of the outdoors.
Tolentino is a letter carrier with the Cranston post office. “I walk 10 to 12 miles a day delivering the mail,” he says. And when he’s not doing his postal rounds, he’s still outside, either hiking or biking. “Rhode Island has the perfect amount of diversity when it comes to the outdoors,” he says. “Health is really wealth.”
No surprise, he’s “super into gardening,” as he puts it, growing ornamental flowers, along with such edibles as eggplant, tomatoes, mint, rosemary, and basil in his backyard. Tolentino has been together with his wife, Krystal, for 20 years. They have two children, Jordan, 19, and Violet, 10, both of whom he immortalized as an artist can.
He painted Jordan in a mural he did on a utility box near the post office in Garden City Center, Cranston, and put Violet in a mural on a utility box near the Cranston Police Department.
“My wife buys most of my art supplies,” he says, adding that sometimes she brings home a particular watercolor that really catches his eye. She also chides him, good-naturedly, about his sketching.
“Krystal tells me I don’t play enough. She says all my sketches look like finished pieces. She suggests I be a lot looser when drawing or doodling in my sketchbook,” the artist relates.
On his days off, Tolentino carries around his sketchbook, in which he works in pencil, colored pencil, charcoal, watercolor, or gouache, which is made from pigment, water, and a binder like gum arabic. He sometimes combines the mediums. For instance, he’ll work in some highlights with charcoal on a watercolor painting.
Tolentino got interested in art when he was a child. “I found my Mom’s loose sketchbook pages on which she’d drawn me and my sister, along with cartoons. I said to myself, ‘I can make my own coloring books.’” When he was in kindergarten, he loved it when crayons were handed out. That meant it was time for art, he recalls.
His desire to be an artist really took hold when he attended public junior high school in PVD. His art teacher, Jonny Skye, would give him a sketchbook and say, “Do your own thing,” he relates. She encouraged him to paint in primary colors.
“She is totally one of my favorite people,” he says. Skye is a citizen of the Peoria Tribe of Oklahoma, and former proprietor of PVD’s Skye Gallery.
Other artists who’ve inspired him over the years are Savonnara Alexander Sok, who does street art with an Asian flair, and a self-taught multidisciplinary artist and muralist known as Eear_plug.
Tolentino started out in the public art arena by doing, as he puts it, “unsanctioned murals.” Spray-painted graffiti, in other words.
Subsequently, he painted a utility box in PVD as part of The Avenue Concept’s Ripples Project. He titled it The Mind’s Garden. His artwork has also appeared in four shows sponsored by Rhode Island Latino Arts. He’s done a couple of Mural Art Battles at PVD Fest, too.
He uses whatever happens to be at hand when he creates his art, be it acrylic paint, watercolors, spray paint, even house paint. “If I had just dirt and water, I’d use that,” he says with a laugh.
The thing is to keep painting, to keep practicing, he emphasizes. “In some ways, I’m like a kid doing something for the first time. There’s a feeling of newness which keeps me learning and growing in the practice of my art,” Tolentino explains.
The artist loves music, and listens to it all the time, be it laid-back tunes for relaxation or upbeat dance music. He particularly likes R&B, hip-hop, reggae, instrumental, electronic, and classical music, to name just some of the forms. He watched a lot of MTV when he was growing up, he adds.
“Music is part of a balanced diet,” he comments.
Tolentino seeks to tell stories through his art, and hopes that people recognize the creativity within themselves when they view his paintings and murals, and get some joy and inspiration out of them.
“This place is paradise,” he concludes of the Ocean State and its artistic community.
–John Picinich
Tolentino’s extensive portfolio can be viewed on Instagram @nikotolentinoart.