Jackie Liu

Lives and works in Daly City, CA

Artist statement

How do you cope with being unwanted by your own mother? With racist taunts from white peers and strangers? With panic attacks and binge-eating and immobilizing depression? With fatigue so consuming that each footstep becomes a marathon; migraines so intense that sunlight and music cause agony; brain fog so engulfing that common sense recedes into mystery? I am a disabled and neurodivergent Chinese American artist who makes silly paintings with serious intent: resistance, healing, survival. Living with Long COVID, autism, and an alphabet soup of mental and physical maladies, I confront trauma with humor and joy – a tenacious declaration of the right to flourish. Seeking to revive presence, gratitude, and connection in an ever-more commodified, alienating, and digitized world, I create vibrant, intimately detailed paintings depicting my chosen family and beloved community in moments of everyday levity. My practice insists upon the importance of joy: far from a frivolous indulgence, it is the essence of our shared humanity. My art, and the body that creates it, are profoundly shaped by trauma and illness. In conjuring colorful compositions shimmering with delight, I find refuge and remedy. Layering oils over glowing orange acrylics, I harness the laborious slowness of painting to suspend fleeting blissful memories, dwell inside their terrain, eternalize their essence in pigment and surface. Meticulously rendering each detail in vivid saturated hues, I devote my close...

Artwork