Anson Liaw
Canada
Anson Liaw is an award-winning illustrator and fine artist who 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.
When critically observing Anson’s work, novelty is, in fact, the first thing that springs off the page. The complex rhythms of various ideas and how they juxtapose one another is a marvel to behold!
Things that often appear to be in contrast to each other in daily life suddenly offer a different perspective. Oscillating between sleek minimalism to defined maximalism, his illustrations are not over-bearing on the eye, nor are they reticent. The lines — which he so happens to be in love with — insulate the composition with glaring simplicity, “I am in love with emphasizing the power of the line when creating my artwork. Using a combination of drawing mediums like graphite pencil, ink drawing pens, and India ink, and then completing them using digital media allows my line artwork to become more noticed and alive to me somehow especially when it comes to integrating and using color work in the process and, overall, gives it the life and power to tell my stories with increased flexibility, versatility and visual intrigue compared to myself using raw traditional art mediums alone”.
He does use traditional media when appropriate but he often does so to push it to its extremes. He is at his most vivid and playful attitude when he utilizes both sides of the coin, traditional and digital, in conjunction, both complimenting his way of seeing with an emphasis on line, shape, textural nuances, and color.
The context is often personal, “[The] darker experiences in life offer me a never-ending library of creative inspirational opportunities and ideas to create art that possesses the purposeful ability to a be a visual language to create daily visual dialogues to help others and myself to cope and heal by stimulating empathetic connections to these much needed to-be-addressed personal life experiences which also to me, naturally and many a time, relate to the many the compounding societal and political issues that consistently needs to be addressed that are experienced by people within the world every day”.
A proponent of social change, Anson is inspired by the visual paradigm of reality and the emotional palette it offers. Relaying the complexity, absurdity and sometimes, even the simplicity of life’s journey, Anson’s metaphors hope to charm and baffle the world into a unique, personal experience.
Websites.
www.illoz.com/liaw
www.liaw-anson.format.com
Instagram:
www.instagram.com/anson.liaw
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/ansonliawillustration/
Unbreakable (version 11)
Blue Moon, I Saw Me Standing Alone (version 5)
2020 annual 45th Toronto International Film Festival (version 1)
