Crystal Liu Toronto, Canada, b. 1980

Canadian Chinese artist Crystal Liu graduated from the Ontario College of Art & Design in 2003 and completed her MFA in New Genres at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005.

Liu intimately ties her emotional states to beautiful abstract paintings. In large-scale works, she constructs landscapes that are metaphors for the intangible forces that drive us. Visually, elements of the Earth and sky are the actors for the feelings we cannot easily imagine. Together, the sun, mountains, and more depict “narratives of conflict, entrapment, longing, and precarious hope”. Liu uses marbleized paper and creates swirls of black ink using a Chinese painting brush. This combination mimics stones and subterranean sections of land. The metallic pigments, in contrast, represent the moon and hundreds of stars, which breathe life into every piece.