Jackie Liu
- 49 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Jackie Liu is a Chinese American painter in the San Francisco Bay Area who makes what she calls silly paintings with serious intent. She used to paint her trauma head-on, until it grew so heavy she dreaded the work. What turned it around was a photo of a friend happily eating a banana, which she knew right away she had to paint. Now she paints her friends and family in warm, everyday scenes, starting with a bright orange underlayer that glows through the top. Chronic illness slowed her down, and she turned that into part of the work. This year she won the Winsor & Newton International Art Prize.
Q: You describe your work as silly paintings with serious intent. How did you arrive at that way of working?
A: Painting, for me, has always been a means of metabolizing trauma. But early in my practice, this process was far more literal. I translated my wounds – abusive family, mental illness, racism, sexual assault – into a visual language of menacing shadows, screaming faces, clawing hands. Narrativizing and aestheticizing my suffering offered some catharsis, but also forced me to revive it, dwell inside it. Eventually, the very act of creating grew so laborious, so emotionally fraught, that it filled me with dread. At a breaking point, I finally decided to try something new. I'd recently taken a photo of my dear friend gleefully munching on a banana, and a voice inside me insisted, "You need to paint this." Passion and excitement reignited.
For the first time in a long time, making art was fun. It didn't feel like depletion – it felt like light, like breath. Like something that could keep me going.
Q: You paint your chosen family in everyday moments. How do you pick them?
A: I seek moments that radiate love and abundance, that evoke gratitude for the wholeness we bring to each other's lives. I feel like I've developed an intuition for what might make a good painting: it's a combination of the cerebral – assessing composition, color, and narrative – and the corporeal – viscerally feeling nostalgic warmth suffusing my chest, or giggles bubbling in my belly, or a sense of home settling in my bones. If something feels right, that voice declaring "you need to paint this" announces itself.
Q: Why is the glowing orange layer under every painting?
A: Because color is relative, starting with such a vibrant base helps me push the saturation of the hues layered on top. I allow the warm tones of the underpainting to peek through the final layers, permeating the piece with a glowing vivacity. Moreover, it serves as a kind of homage to process: leaving glimpses of the first layer exposed preserves the piece's origin in its final form – a self-contained geological record of its creation. (I also just enjoy the color orange. It is very yummy to my eyeballs.)
Q: Your work insists on joy while your days are shaped by chronic pain. How do those two live together in the studio?
A: On the best days, when the pain is tolerable, joy furnishes a reservoir that I draw upon for strength; conjuring colorful compositions offers refuge and remedy. On the worst days, when catastrophe rages within, darkness swallows those glimmers of delight. Yet I often still force myself to sit at my easel, teeth gritted, tears blurring my vision. After years of disability, I continue to struggle to dispel the notion that human value must be earned through "hard work" and "efficiency." When I'm not accomplishing something tangible, shame lodges heavy in my gut. Even when my body screams in protest, the compulsion to produce feels as ineluctable as gravity. But I've been trying to practice self-compassion and honor my body's needs. Finding balance between pushing myself and letting myself rest is a constant learning process. My creative practice has become more than just making art – it's also crafting a livable life.
Q: Painting is slow, and you've made that slowness part of the work. Why does it matter to you?
A: As a Type-A overachiever my whole life, I was always go-go-go. Always undertaking new endeavors, chasing new aspirations. But it was unsustainable. The repercussions eventually manifested: psychological burnout, physiological deterioration. Since getting sick, my body now imposes a hard stop. It simply can no longer do what it once could. I've had to adapt to this new reality, learning (with great difficulty!) to let things unfold in their own time. I approach my deliberate slowness as a form of praxis – an enactment of resistance against the forces of ableist capitalism that ravage our bodies and spirits. I remind myself often of Audre Lorde's words: "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."
The elements of our lives that make them meaningful – relationships, community, identity, purpose – take time to grow. Embracing slowness means aligning my work with the pace of being human.
Q: This has been a big year, the Winsor & Newton International Art Prize, the Vermont Studio Center fellowship. What's next for you?
A: In September, as part of the Winsor & Newton prize, I'll be traveling to New York to present a new painting and discuss my work in conversation with Sergio Pardo López, Director of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and a representative from ArtReview. In October, I'll be showing six paintings in an exhibition at the Euphrat Museum of Art in Cupertino, CA.
But in the more immediate future, what's next for me is a bajillion medical appointments (Long Covid specialist, endocrinologist, neurologist, psychiatrist, otolaryngologist, TMJ specialist, physical therapist, occupational therapist) and procedures (bloodwork, MRIs, bone density scan, orthostatic intolerance test, turbinate reduction). Navigating chronic illness feels like its own full-time job.
In that vein, I'm about to embark upon a project I'm really excited about, which will involve painting the everyday joy of people in the chronic illness community. I already have quite a few participants lined up!
