Special interview with Kristen Liu-Wong

June 18, 2020 · Conducted by RICE Founder, Daniela Zamora & guest journalist Sandra N. Skriver

“I am 28 years old. And my favorite number is 8 (or 3). I was raised Catholic but I consider myself an atheist who is open to possibilities. I’ve always loved to read a lot but I definitely stopped reading as much as I used to once I began to seriously focus on my art career. For a while I was such a workaholic that I almost only made art all the time but for the past year or so I’ve actively been making time to read again and now it is such an incredible reprieve from all of the chaos that is happening in real life. It’s nice to enter someone else’s world instead of focusing on mine so much.”

So, looking at your work our best guess is that you love candy. Is there a story behind the 50 shades of pink you use?

I do like candy, which is why I can’t let myself buy it too much although I’ll usually take a salty snack over dessert. When I was a little kid I actually used to dislike pink because I thought it was too “girly” and I was into dinosaurs and planets. As an angsty teenager I only drew in black and white and I only wore black hoodies. Once I got to art school (Pratt), I was forced out of my comfort zone and took a Light, Color and Design Class where I learned that I didn’t need to be intimidated by color or paint. It took me awhile to find my groove but by the end of Junior Year I had begun to find my way and my work became very colorful and the ancestor of what my current work is. I like how the bright, eye-catching colors draw viewers in and I appreciate how the brightness of the colors is often at odds with the content of the image.

The contents are strong and dramatic. We cannot help but wonder, what is it with your life that attracts you to paint so much drama?

I’ve always appreciated a good story (probably a part of the reason I majored in Illustration too). A good painting is like a good book or a good opera—it can simultaneously reflect your world while heightening it and putting a new perspective on it that opens viewers up to new possibilities. When your life is crazy, it’s nice to see some of that drama reflected back. When your life has become mundane it’s exciting to experience work that has such high stakes.

A good story and certain hunger for the female body, is there a story behind that?

For a long time, and still to an extent to this day, I was extremely uncomfortable with my body and my own sexuality. I never would let myself wear a skirt or anything form fitting as a teen and sexually I was quite a late bloomer. Once I got to college, I realized that I could either spend my entire life hiding behind loose hoodies and avoiding/fearing men and intimacy, or I could make myself uncomfortable and see what happens. It took a long time, and as I said I’m still a work in progress, but you can almost visually see my confidence in form and in myself grow in my work. When I first started drawing the figures that are the predecessors to my current figures, they were much more stickish and generalized and very heavily influenced by my love of American folk art. My current figures are much fleshier and dimensional. They act as more direct reflections of myself now too as I often have to model the poses on myself, their body hair reflects mine, their pimples reflect my pimples, their belly bulges reflect mine, etc. Their bodies are likely to change as mine does.

So, somehow they mirror your own personal evolution. How attached are you to the pieces you create? Whenever you finish a piece, are you ready to let it go? Is there one that you feel you will never want to let go of?

I’m attached to them to a certain degree. I’m not like a Tibetan monk—if they were to be destroyed upon their completion, I would lose my shit. But I am able to always relinquish them to a new owner should they get one—and so far, every piece I’ve made that’s been my favorite has been purchased. I have bills so holding onto a big, good piece isn’t really an option for me yet,  but it does make me happy knowing my pieces get to go on to live with someone else—it’s incredibly fulfilling to know that people like my work enough that they will choose to hang it up in their homes.

Without a doubt, because it’s beautiful, so meticulous and full of details. How long does it usually take you to complete a piece?

A painting, and it really depends on size and complexity, can take anywhere from one to four weeks and I usually work from like 10:00 am to 1:00 or 2:00 am. I used to work until 4:00 am and only take off one day a week if that, but as I near 30, I’m trying to be healthier this year because the stress and lack of sleep does eventually get to you. I think people can really tell when someone has lovingly labored by hand over an object so I never allow myself to rush or cut corners simply because I’m tired but I’ve also realized the quality of the work suffers if you don’t allow yourself time to also just be a person, especially since art is often about just that.

So, no cutting corners when you’re tired, but what about creative blocks? How have you been dealing with them lately?

It’s been especially difficult to feel inspired or like what I’m doing even has any worth in these times so overcoming creative blocks has proved particularly challenging. Usually I’d go to an art show or museum, or visit somewhere cool/do something new to refresh myself creatively but since that is not an option during quarantine, I look at a lot of my art books, watch new films or I’ll take a day to just read and zone out. A lot of work has been cancelled or delayed so I’m also learning to not push myself to be on constantly and really let myself take time to come up with an image I’m truly invested in.

Sounds like a lesson in progress, do you feel your work has been affected by the quarantine in other ways?

It definitely has. As I mentioned, it has been incredibly hard to stay inspired and focused when there are so many huge events taking place and society and the economy has been thrown into chaos. I’ve already had multiple jobs and shows cancelled or indefinitely postponed and since art is ultimately a luxury good, I anticipate that business will continue to tighten. Some days I feel like what I’m doing is stupid and of no consequence and who cares if I finish a dumb drawing anyways when there’s so much pain and suffering and injustice in the world. And then some days, I’m reminded of why I love art so dearly—it can be surprisingly cathartic to paint a rainbow pattern mindlessly for hours, an escape that brings joy through the simple act of creation.

We certainly hope the implications of this recent period will pass and you’ll be able to return to doing collabs with brands, exhibiting your work at amazing galleries and even booking your exhibits one or two years in advance, so we have to ask, how did you make it? You graduated in 2013 Illustration at Pratt institute but your professional progression has been so quick, would you mind telling us a bit about your story?

I think my success had been a combination of luck and hard work, like many people’s successes. My first art shows were given to me as opportunities by professors who liked my work from school and had been asked to curate shows—an important reason to always do your homework and try hard in school even if it isn’t the “real” world yet. People saw my work in those shows and gave me further opportunities from that. Every opportunity I got I put everything I could into it—I would put in as many pieces as I could, I would paint murals for my portion of the wall if allowed, I would show up to the opening no matter how small.

Simultaneously, I started a Tumblr my last year of college and submitted my work to any blog that would accept it. Tumblr was how I got my first group show in LA—one of the curators found it on there—that then led to my first three person show with a bigger name gallery, when the owner saw my work in the group show. I worked for a couple years after graduation in a print studio so I could pay bills and I would paint on nights and weekends. If I didn’t have art jobs, I would create jobs—at one point I even did 6x6 paintings for people for $15 just because I knew I needed to keep painting and I needed extra cash. 

When I first graduated, I sent out over 100 emails to art directors and even met with a few in emails to art directors and even met with a few in person and got literally zero job offers from any of them. Many of them told me my work would do better in galleries, and they were partially right because that is where I first started getting momentum.

When I moved to LA in 2015 I didn’t have a regular job lined up, so I decided to give freelancing my everything while I lived off of the money I had saved up from my studio job. If you want to be able to do art as a living, you’re going to have to be flexible and resourceful. I had my first sticker and print company with my best friend in high school, so I’ve always tried to be proactive when it comes to my career—and by “company” I mean we would literally sit in the street and try to sell our stickers we made at Kinko’s to passersby, it was super low budget.

What is the best piece of advice you have received on your journey as an artist?

This is a bit of practical advice, but I still use this all the time so whatever: one of my favorite professors, Kenichi Hoshine—he is an amazing painter and artist but no longer teaches at Pratt—taught me to use black gesso as opposed to black acrylic for any line work since it’s super fluid but also nicely opaque so you don’t need too many coats. It’s also great for large flat areas of black, of course you can mix a more nuanced black but since it is so fluid, I use it as a base for mixing other blacks too. Practical and technical tips are some of the most valuable knowledge we can share with other artists so I hope that helps some other painters out there.