Crystal Liu is a Canadian born Chinese artist currently based in San Francisco, California. She received her A.O.C.A.D from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2003, and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005. Her work has been exhibited in internationally in Asia and Canada, and nationally in San Francisco and New York. Her work is included in collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as well as the Progressive Art Collection, and has been featured in Artforum, Artnews, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Artist Statement:
Liu constructs landscapes as metaphors for the intangible forces that drive human beings from within. Tying intimately with her emotional states, Liu derives the narratives of intention and desire with teetering optimism through her portrayal of the moon, stars, mountains and rocks in her paintings. The complexities of life, from hopefulness to desolation, are carefully infused into the landscapes of her work, alluding to truths from the artist’s own private life. She precisely applies clusters of dots in her paintings, which become a signature surface texture. She also lets the paint take their own course when she uses them with ink washes and marbling techniques, making the elements in her paintings sprout, like the nature of life. The swirls of marbleized paint echo the heritage art of Chinese ink paintings. The distinct edged collage mimics the hard and enormous stones, mountains and cliffs of the natural world, providing shelter and protection, and elevating other forms, such as birch trees and chrysanthemum flowers, closer to the moon.