Anson Liaw — Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

Biography

Anson Liaw is an illustrator artist who enjoys creating work that takes on critical views; both light and heavy about life in the world around us and that deals with social, political, cultural issues, and lifestyle subject matter. He enjoys combining various everyday life objects, scenes, and situations from life, memory, and imagination, and then combines and fuses them together to manufacture new and unexpected yet familiar meaning that ignites a spark to drive discussion and encourages people to be engaged to see, appreciate and learn something new every day about the world around them. Anson shares his love and passion for the communication and design arts by teaching at OCAD University and Virtute Innovation and Art Education Inc. (VIA Secondary School) in Canada.

Artist Statement

“I feel I am useless as an artist when I am happy. Pain is what creates my artwork. The painful experiences that people go through as they journey through life in the world around us from childhood to adulthood which in many ways is full of chaos and hardship are what sparks and motivates me to possess my objectives to make purposeful artwork that hopefully generates meaningful and fulfilling empathetic connections to people. As I observe and interpret the world around me combined with creating my artwork, I discover time and time again that true beauty lies within the darkness and that sometimes nightmares are the birthplace of some of the best ideas for an artist.”

What first prompted you to think of becoming an artist?

When I was a child at 3 years old or earlier, making art was one of the only things I excelled at doing over anything else while I was growing up and attending public elementary & secondary schools across Canada. One sure thing is that making artwork made me really happy and I felt alive in more ways than I can describe with words. I still feel this way now when I make art and this to me is an indelible sign I discovered very early that not only prompted me to become an artist but it was my destiny always from the get-go in life for me. Whenever I drew, I felt time flew by so quickly for me always as I would spend hours and hours drawing non-stop until I reached a personal point of satisfaction that a finished piece of artwork I created would somehow say something important visually and/or at least spark a positive reaction to a viewer in a beautiful and magical way. So, in many ways, my goal to become a relevant artist in society as a way to hopefully make a living at being one, and to somehow become something that will fulfill my purpose in life happened quite early. Also, as I was growing up, I always felt the pressure to succeed as an artist because it was the only thing I wanted to do, and at the same time, I knew it is a profession with no guarantees that a person will be able to make a living at. So, I always felt and still do to this day that my back was and is against the wall and that I had and have no other choice in life but to be an artist and succeed at being one because making art was the only real tangible thing that I was and am good at doing. And I also know that there are many highly accomplished artists in the world that are better than I am which really scares me but also inspires and drives me to find my own ways to succeed as an artist always. The “no choice but and do or die thinking to succeed as an artist” reality gave birth to me being a natural artist seed to plant into the earth and to cultivate, nurture, cherish, grow and develop always to possess that constant sense of urgency to make myself become a relevant contributing artist for people in society.

What kind of an artist do you ultimately see yourself?

To me, artists and their artwork creations play a huge role in society. So, as I am living life among everyone else in the world and developing as an artist over time and more and more, I’ve discovered the need and desire to make artwork that would somehow serve the world and make it a better place somehow became my purpose in life as an artist. To make art that makes a positive impact and difference for people in the world on a small to hopefully, in time a larger scale is what is most important and fulfilling for me now and personally. By making art that addresses the many difficult social and political issues that happen and has existed and is, unfortunately, compounding too as time passes in the world both historically and on an ongoing basis, I feel that artists possess the beautiful gift of being a visual hero in society and heroes who are creative visual proponents of positive social and political change in society.

What are you hoping to communicate to the viewer through your work?

What I am always hoping to communicate to the viewer through my artwork I believe coincides, relates with, and can be best expressed within my personal artist statement and quote:

“I feel I am useless as an artist when I am happy. Pain is what creates my artwork. The painful experiences that people go through as they journey through life in the world around us from childhood to adulthood which in many ways is full of chaos and hardship are what sparks and motivates me to possess my objectives to make purposeful artwork that hopefully, generates meaningful and fulfilling empathetic connections to people. As I observe and interpret the world around me combined with creating my artwork, I discover time and time again that true beauty lies within the darkness and that sometimes nightmares are the birthplace of some of the best creative ideas for an artist.”

My personal emotions in many ways connect with the most critical reason about why I make art now which is soulfully connected to the emotions all human beings experience on a daily basis, and which also connect with my goal as an illustrator and fine artist about helping people understand and connect with their own emotions intimately through viewing my art, and to understand that through the myriad of happy, sad, angry painful human emotions experienced daily as we all journey through life, they will experience my art as a visual language through my mind and eyes that naturally becomes and creates visual dialogues in society to hopefully, make a positive impact and difference for them personally while they live, learn and discover the world and grow always to become better and more informed people to serve the world.

Can you explain the process of creating your work?

I find I am always working as an artist. I work when I am awake and asleep. It is like I have to satisfy a personal constant need to be able to feed the creative beast that has developed over time and permanently possessed within me so-to-speak, much like a passion, love, or even addiction and obsession for the need to make creative meaning somehow out of anything I encounter with and learn about and discover in life on a daily basis. I am constantly processing my daily life experiences which naturally surfaces and transfers to become creative visual thoughts and eventually, visual storytelling imagery through the objects and anything I am curious about appreciating and then somehow fuse and integrate together magically to satisfy my creative imagination with meaning, and at the same time and most importantly, it must connect effectively to either solve a communication and design problem for a commissioned illustration assignment and/or for personal non-commissioned assignments as well. Then, at the same time, I study, think about, and play with intimately, all of the tools I enjoy using to make my artwork from experimenting with using various raw general dry and wet drawing media on tracing & layout papers to sketch out & refined my ideas to then using various archival art papers, and digital media too, I try always to make my materials used to somehow manifest the perfectly balanced mixture of allowing the materials I use to achieve the balance of aesthetically and conceptually expressing my creative visual storytelling artwork effectively within appreciating the subtle nuances they make naturally on various surfaces and treatments through my mind and active participation to make the marks they make with purposeful control and to serve purposeful storytelling visual message that needs to happen and be made with appropriate visual intrigue and added mystery and surprises to grab my viewers’ attention.

What is your favorite part of the creative process?

The favorite part of the creative process is discovering that important creative and mysterious magical “a-ha!” spark moment or moments personally in life and then immediately on paper. This either naturally happens and/or needs to happen between being in the processing stages of myself being constantly and naturally being very curious about anything and everything in the world around us in regards to how they can function for me creatively and always, appreciating and being inspired by the visual paradigm of reality and the emotional palette it naturally offers me to use my creative imagination freely yet purposefully always to make my art to communicate something new yet with magical familiarity in mind to draw and engage with my viewers to create a visual dialogue with them and develop visual relationships on an ongoing and daily basis concerning the world around us.

Can you give us an insight into current projects and inspiration, or what we can look forward to from you in the near future?

Since the world is naturally such a fascinating place, is always changing, and filled with so many real-life stories happening daily in reality, inspiration is at my doorstep every day and the next near future exciting art assignments for both personal and commissioned purposes happen every day for me as I wake up to start each new day of creating my artwork. My plan and goal are to constantly develop my work to reach new heights for myself as an illustrator and fine artist on an ongoing basis; always developing my work both conceptually and aesthetically to make it serve the world to help make it a better place. I also dream about having my illustration and fine artwork be exhibited in art galleries around the world, and I continue to aim to fulfill the need of every societal, political and lifestyle communication and design-related poster illustration and/or graphic art exhibition and event I consider myself to be very fortunate to be invited to participate and create artwork for to help serve and make the world to be a better place.

Website www.liaw-anson.format.com

Instagram www.instagram.com/anson.liaw

Facebook www.facebook.com/Anson-Liaw-Illustration-135393145530