Interview with Anson Liaw
Anson Liaw is an illustrator and enjoys creating work that take 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.
Could you please introduce yourself and tell us how you started in the arts? and your first experience in art-making?
My name is Anson Liaw, and I believe I've been drawing and making art since I've been exposed to taking art at the kindergarten school level at 3 years old or earlier. I recall one of the turning points of my life as an artist happened quite early while I was creating a series of colored drawings for a grade 9 Canadian history class assignment about the Battle of Quebec, also called Battle on the Plains of Abraham (September 13, 1759). The experience and challenges I had with creating these drawings still live within my mind and soul vividly, and I believe this naturally lead to myself being set on a never-ending path to exploring, discovering & understanding the power that artists have with telling interesting stories in a compelling visual way and to make a difference on a small to large scale about how people view and understand anything that happened and is happening within the world around us.
How would you describe yourself and your artwork?
I consider myself to be a physically and spiritually active and curious person. Everything in the world around us is interesting to me; from myself studying, questioning and discovering interesting things about how people behave in society in general to my daily enjoyment, exploration, and discovery about how observing and investigating nature and all natural and man-made objects and how they can be combined to work for me to create communication art that stimulates the understanding of something familiar into something that becomes new in the process of manufacturing new meaning. I am constantly fascinated about how I can naturally spark my mind to have creative ideas at any given moment to help fuel my conceptual illustration art-making just by observing making art from anything that crosses my path as I journey through life in the world around us.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
Art movements and reasons behind their original purposes, mixing of art movements and all cultural influences, the idea that beauty is within everything; light and dark and good and bad, the careful observation, investigation and appreciation of the world around us and visual ideas that compel people to think and act intertwine and function together to represent and serve as my creative influences and inspiration to make my artwork. In general, anything in the world around me can inspire me creatively. Exploring people's behavior in society and the human condition and how anything I see and learn about and to understand can become compelling working metaphors for me to tell stories are also natural sources of inspiration.
What emotions do you hope the viewers experience when looking at your art?
My emotions in many ways connects 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 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 inform people to serve the world.
When do you know that an artwork is finished?
When all of the principles of design well like unity, balance, emphasis, proportion, scale and rhythm are all working together to help communicate the story and idea behind my work and its purpose visually concerning what I am trying to express and yet at the same time, reaches my constant personal goal to somehow achieve to make my artwork push boundaries in interesting ways somehow to surprise myself and possibly, violate my customary valuations of things expected within a finished piece of artwork and that offers me and hopefully, my viewers new and other unexpected ones.
What has been the most exciting moment in your art career so far?
The realization that as an illustrator artist, I can play a huge role in society. And that all artists with their art and myself included, possess a unique voice for things that need to be addressed, have great creative powers in society and therefore, the artist has great responsibility to make a positive impact and make the world to be a better place somehow with the gift to be able to share their visual ideas from a small to large scale for any age group for people in the world around us.
How long does it take to produce one work?
It usually takes anywhere between 10 to 40 hours for me to produce a piece of finished artwork. If I create work using raw traditional art media, the amount of complexity and the size of the work, naturally dictates how much time it will take for me to complete one work. For digital media work, it could take anywhere from 10 to 40 hours as well depending on the how much time I may want or have to spend on playing with the color making decisions & subtle nuances during my art creation stages. Much of the critical time spent for me to create my artwork is on getting strong working ideas as rough small to larger more refined working sketches on paper first to select from and then, one them gets selected for me to finally begin creating my final artwork for both commissioned, applied in context, and personal illustration projects.
What exciting projects are you working on right now? Can you share some of the future plans for your artwork?
Since the world is such a fascinating place, is always changing, and filled with so many real-life stories happening daily in reality, the next exciting project for both personal and commissioned projects happen every day for me as I wake up to start a new day of creating my artwork. My plan and goal are to constantly develop my work to reach new heights for myself as an artist on an ongoing basis; always developing my work both conceptually and aesthetically to serve the world to help make it a better place. I also dream about having my artwork be exhibited in art galleries around the world.
Do you have any upcoming events or exhibitions we should know about?
It is hard to pin down some and/or any particular event or art events & exhibitions I can inform you about that I will be a part of. However and continuing and expanding about the idea that the world changes daily, and the fact that it is a naturally fascinating place, I consider myself very fortunate to have myself be invited throughout each year by various designer-artists, poster event organizers & theme-related art exhibitions & events from around the world to participate as an illustrator to be challenged to create illustrations relating to a variety of interesting ongoing current events related to yearly worldly commemorative & annual events, and/or of course, directly related to the new and always developing and changing breakthrough moments & news concerning social, political and lifestyle subject matter that help fuel my mind heart, and soul creatively as an illustrator artist.
Where do you see your art going in five years?
I see my art in needing to be in a continuous state of change as needed as the state-of-things in societies in the world changes. By having this happen constantly is the only way for my art to capture the idea of celebrating life as it happens by making it live-in-the moment for the 'now', and for my every 5 year future goals in search for that ultimate state of being and to have that timeless effect and have it become instilled in people's minds and hearts somehow, and working for people every day as a visual empathetic entity to help enlightened them about what is happening, changing and can happen in the world, and of course, in the process, help them to reflect & see themselves in it, and to take action each day to consistently make the world to become a better place.
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