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Obituary: Artist Joseph Egoyan ran store that became Antique Row fixture

Joseph Egoyan was a fiercely independent painter and person, an attitude he carried with him until his death. Passionate was a word his two children, filmmaker Atom Egoyan and pianist Eve Egoyan, use to describe their father. Unbridled is another.
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Joseph Egoyan wanted to enjoy as much of life as he could, his son, Atom, said.

Joseph Egoyan was a fiercely independent painter and person, an attitude he carried with him until his death.

Passionate was a word his two children, filmmaker Atom Egoyan and pianist Eve Egoyan, use to describe their father.

Unbridled is another. “Dad was a really strong personality,” Atom said with a laugh. “He was his own guy. Some of it was his cultural background, but some of it was his temperament.”

The Victoria resident, known by many around the city as Joe, died on June 14 from complications due to kidney and heart failure. He was 85.

He likely would have extended his life by a few months or even years had he followed the advice of his doctors, but that would not have been his style, his children said.

Joe had a major heart operation 10 years ago, but wanted to enjoy as much of life as he could, “so he made certain choices,” said Atom, an Oscar-nominated director.

“He made it really clear that he didn’t want dialysis, he didn’t want to have any of that interference. He was in a palliative situation, but he insisted on being independent for as long as he could.”

Toronto residents Atom, 58, and Eve, 54, spent a few memorable days with their father before he died, and said they loved being back in the city where they were raised, as they drove to and from Royal Jubilee Hospital for their visits.

Born and raised in Cairo, Joe grew up in the still-fresh shadow of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, which claimed both of his grandparents on his mother’s side.

With that pall hanging over his family, Joe turned to painting and was given a one-man show in Cairo while still a teenager. He would later receive a full scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago, and earned a teaching degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts.

When he travelled back to Cairo for a job teaching at the American College, he met his future wife, Shushan Devletian. The couple went on to run Ego Arts, a private gallery and design store in Cairo, before an opportunity presented itself in Victoria.

They changed the family surname from Yeghoyan to Egoyan and, in 1963, took over a Fort Street furnishings store, Ego Interiors, which became a fixture of Antique Row.

The upstairs loft of the Tudor-style building at 1028 Fort St. was a meeting place for a burgeoning group of artists who had been transplanted to Victoria in the 1960s, primarily to teach at the University of Victoria.

Many legendary local artists with whom the Egoyans had an association — sculptors Elza Mayhew and Patricia Martin Bates, and painters Myfanwy Pavelic, Maxwell Bates and Herbert Siebner, for example — were regular visitors, Atom said.

“As a kid observing that, how could that not influence you? Being around practising artists, and understanding that art was a way of translating your feelings into this thing you could share with other people, and the idea of art as a communal practice, was really something I inherited from my parents.”

Eve remembered connecting with her father through music. Joe played the accordion, but he also had good ears. Jazz and classical music were constants.

“It wasn’t so much intentional and educational, it was just part of who they were and what was important to them,” Eve said of her parents’ influence. “It was part of the texture of my life. They were cutting-edge for their time, but we didn’t see it from that place because we were inside of it.”

Joe also taught a popular interior design course. While Shushan returned to painting when her children were older, Joe did not. He paid less attention to his own art as time wore on, having turned his focus to running the family business.

“It was a big risk for two immigrants,” Eve said. “They were very fortunate to have done well. But they did sacrifice their art.”

Atom said part of Joe’s reluctance to re-start his career as a painter was his inability to play by the rules. Shushan received acclaim for her artistic endeavours into her 70s, with support from places such as Winchester Galleries.

“The commercial world of art wasn’t something [my father] ever quite understood, and he never had that relationship my mother had with a particular gallery,” Atom said.

“He always tried to do it on his own terms. He always thought he could bypass the traditional route. And in art, that’s tough to do. There are certain rules.”

Out of frustration, Joe would often return to his earlier canvases that had not sold, and put another layer of paint on them. Some of the paintings were watercolours of birds that had been shown in his solo exhibition at the Royal B.C. Museum in 1970. “That was alarming, because some of those early works were so beautiful,” Atom said.

Joe and Shushan had a unique equilibrium as a couple, and it was their yin-yang tendencies that made them seem like larger-than-life characters around Victoria, Atom said.

“My mom is incredibly gracious and able to handle anyone. But my dad, he would get really impatient. When he felt strongly about something, you knew he felt strongly about something.”

mdevlin@timescolonist.com