Roy Kiyooka was born in 1926 in Moose Jaw, Sask. He received his initial art training at the Calgary Institute of Technology and Art. He taught painting classes at the Regina College School of Art from 1957 to 1959. After leaving Regina, Kiyooka lived and taught in Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Halifax, Victoria, Charlottetown and in Vancouver again, where he remained until his death in 1994. While Kiyooka was in Regina he associated with members of the Regina 5, mainly Ron Bloore, Ken Lochhead and Art McKay. He attended some of the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops, most notably was the one in which Barnett Newman was leader. Newman was known for his tecniques in colour-field painting. In 1969, Kiyooka gave up painting to pursue other art forms, mainly poetry and photography, with excursions into sculpture, video, film, collage, music and performance. He taught in the Fine Arts Dept at the University of British Columbia from 1973 to 1991. Kiyooka wrote 'Nevertheless these eyes' in 1967, 'Transcanada Letters' between 1971 and 1975 and 'Pear Tree Poems' in 1987. Kiyooka died January 1994.