Crystal Liu creates psychological landscapes, using the natural world as a metaphor for her personal joys and suffering. She has created a lexicon of recurring symbols, each representing a specific emotion. When placed together, these symbols create narratives and represent the artist’s emotional state at the time of a work’s inception. In a recent series titled “The Fog,” Liu’s opalescent landscapes appear partially obscured by areas of opaque, grey fog, symbolizing passing feelings of uncertainty or gloom through which a more hopeful scene emerges.
Liu uses a variety of techniques and media to portray the natural elements in her work––such as marbling, watercolor, ink, and gold leaf––resulting in heavily textured and detailed compositions. After graduating from Ontario College of Art and Design with a BFA in 2003, Liu received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005. Her work has been shown internationally at galleries such as Galerie du Monde in Hong Kong, Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York, and Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco.
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