Anson Liaw: " The world is such an interesting place and full of natural creative inspiration"
" Fashion's dirty secret" - created by Anson Liaw
BPP: Who are you?
And who you really are?
Anson Liaw: I am an illustrator artist based in
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
I consider myself to be a human sponge. I absorb
anything in the world around me transform them into visually interesting and
thought provoking ideas that naturally become evident to the creation of my
illustration artwork. The world is such an interesting place and full of
natural creative inspiration. Interesting things, places, people and situations
that occur everyday I absorb in my mind and document since childhood to present
time at any given moment play an important and necessary role to trigger
interesting creative visuals. And when I put different things and situations
together that I recall and document visually, they serve me well to tell
specific stories, evoke emotional responses and become interesting visual
opportunities and interpretations for specific purposes and for specific
creative criteria given for many personal and commissioned based illustration
and communication and design related projects in more ways than I originally
anticipated in an appropriate way. When this happens, it’s priceless.
"Emotional films" - created by Anson Liaw
"Born Evil Study"- created by Anson Liaw
BPP: If you could say something important to others
who were listening, what would you tell them?
Anson Liaw: Do you see what I see? Look at all the all
those interesting lines and textures on the palms of your hands! You know, you
can tell so many interesting stories by transforming let’s say, your lifeline
on the palm of your hand into everything that happened to you to date visually.
Look, I see your lifeline as a wonderful flowing river or maybe, a slithering a
snake and I can see you in it too stepping over some rocks to represent your
personal achievements and stepping stones of life. It represents yourself
surviving everything that happened to you and learning from them. Look, the
rocks seen as something else now…
"5 Golden rings" - created by Anson Liaw
"Bee Mag" - created by Anson Liaw
"Eating disorder" - created by Anson Liaw
BPP: What is
your true dream, the one that keeps you up at night and if one day it were to
come true you would feel peace and calmness in your heart?
Anson Liaw: My dream come true is to discover and
experience true love everyday with someone special in my life, and at the same
time, touch people’s lives everyday with my artwork somehow. These two ideas
don’t really relate at all to most people I feel, but to me personally, it
keeps me dreaming, balanced and of course, going in life. I find these if these
two ideas happen to me and somehow meet, I will experience inner peace and
calmness.
"Another day of people pleasing" - created by Anson Liaw
"Fashion quartely mag" - created by Anson Liaw
"An Illustration about life in performing arts" - created by Anson Liaw
BPP: How is life currently for the people in your
country and what would you wish for them and for the planet at large?
Anson Liaw: People in Canada are in a good place in
life as a whole and individually too to me. I enjoy the humble and
down-to-earth nature of the people in Canada. Canadians tend to accomplish many
great things naturally, unknowingly and/or unexpectedly to me in some cases, by
being humble. I wish for them to continue stay on being their natural humble
and down-to-earth ways. A strong foundation of good values happen and are
developed with a sense of innocence, honesty and natural beauty by being humble
and down-to-earth.
I wish our planet at large and everyone on living on
it now and the future to experience and cherish peace, passion and love for
eternity.
"Giving from the heart" - created by Anson Liaw
"Pisa Pump" - created by Anson Liaw
"L' Oreal press conference" - created by Anson Liaw
BPP: If you had a chance to be a child again would you
choose the same life?
Anson Liaw: If I had a chance to be a child again, I
still would choose to be a visual artist and possibly, collaborate my visual
thinking with film- making.
"Heart smart" - created by Anson Liaw
"Iran" - created by Anson Liaw
BPP: What was
the exact moment that you realized what you wanted to do with your life? How did you feel at this very moment?
Anson Liaw: The exact moment of when I knew I was
going to become an artist that told stories along with delivering my own
personal insight happened when in the two different years in two separate cases
when I was in grade school (grade 3 and in grade 4). Both cases had myself
being challenged to create some artwork for Canadian and world history related
events for a writing assignment with pictures and/or created art images. I
recall vividly my two art projects that I was happy to draw and paint about
were one, to tell the story visually about Viking battleships and the other one
was about an illustrated booklet project to educated people about the Battle of
Quebec in 1759.
It was in these interesting art project related cases that I felt that very sought after and magical and priceless adrenaline rush! I knew making artwork with a specific purpose in mind was something I can do all day and all night and for that matter, I somehow knew right there and then that it’s something I can do for hours and hours and hours on end during any day and for the rest of my life. It made me happy to create and make artwork. I felt like that I belonged to something important and have purpose in life somehow to be making artwork that told stories about something real and that existed in time even at a very early age of my life.
I always did more than I was asked to because I wanted to for each art related project and felt complete freedom in doing so. It was natural for me and it seemed like I did this all along or what many say, it was my calling to be a creative artist.
It was in these interesting art project related cases that I felt that very sought after and magical and priceless adrenaline rush! I knew making artwork with a specific purpose in mind was something I can do all day and all night and for that matter, I somehow knew right there and then that it’s something I can do for hours and hours and hours on end during any day and for the rest of my life. It made me happy to create and make artwork. I felt like that I belonged to something important and have purpose in life somehow to be making artwork that told stories about something real and that existed in time even at a very early age of my life.
I always did more than I was asked to because I wanted to for each art related project and felt complete freedom in doing so. It was natural for me and it seemed like I did this all along or what many say, it was my calling to be a creative artist.
"Taking lives" - created by Anson Liaw
"Lines of life" - created by Anson Liaw
BPP: Would you like to tell us something we didn’t ask
until now?
Anson Liaw: Being an Illustration artist is the
coolest job in the world!
Unpublished personal conceptual illustration about how some men are paranoid about losing all their hair when they use the blow dryer to dry their hair. This illustration garnered recognition by Luerzer's Archive "200 Best Illustrators" Worldwide Special Edition 07/08 and the 2007 COUPE International Design and Image Competition.
"Paranoia" - created by Anson Liaw
A photo of Anson Liaw back in 1981/82 just before playing an ice hockey game
Anson Liaw's drawing for BPProject
Exhibitions
Solo
exhibitions:
2008 Queen Street West Art Crawl at
Response, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2007 Queen Street West Art Crawl at
Response, Toronto. Ontario, Canada
2000 L’Attitudes Restaurant, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada
1996 SWIPE Design, Books + Objects,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Group
exhibitions:
2012 ‘Green+You: Posters for Japan’
International Exhibition in Seoul, Korea
2011 Project Sunshine for Japan
International Poster Exhibition in Tokyo, Japan
2011 Project Sunshine for Japan
International Poster Exhibition in Dusseldorf, Germany
2010 School of Visual Arts’ Where Is My
Vote? Posters for The Green Movement in Iran Poster Design Exhibition, Visual
Arts Gallery in New York, New York, USA
2010 Where Is My Vote? Posters for The
Green Movement in Iran, Social DesignZine in Italy and online exhibition
2010 Xto Image Awards, Santa Monica, CA,
USA
2009 Society of Illustrators Los Angeles
47 Awards and Show Art Exhibition, Gallery Nucleus, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2009 Bepo + Mimi Project “Cut To The
Drummer” Illustration Portrait Art Show, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2008 Bepo + Mimi Project “1st
Sign of Spring” Illustration Art Show, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2008 13th Annual SpeakEasy
Illustration Show, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2008 Canadian Association of
Photographers & Illustrators in Communications “Double Vision” Portrait Art
Show, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2007 Canadian Association of
Photographers & Illustrators in Communications “Double Vision” Portraits
Art Show, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2005 Canadian Association of
Photographers & Illustrators in Communications “Double Vision” Portrait Art
Show, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2002 Canadian Association of
Photographers & Illustrators in Communications Toronto Chapter Exhibition
at Bravo Television, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2000 2nd Annual SpeakEasy
Illustration Show, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
If you want to learn more about Anson Liaw, please visit:
http://www.illoz.com/liaw
http://www.morgangaynin.com/
http://www.ansonliaw.com
Photos copyright by Anson Liaw. All rights reserved.
http://www.ansonliaw.com
Photos copyright by Anson Liaw. All rights reserved.
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