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Calvin Liang
 Keeping His Eye on the Color by Barbara Coyner |
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| The fragrance of
salt water, the stir of gentle ocean breezes on billowy sails,
the deep azure tones as the surf sculpts the shoreline. Calvin
Liang's brush awakens the senses, mixing a deep nostalgia with
an excitement at being there. Classic beach cities such as Sausalito,
Carmel, Monterrey, Catalina, and Laguna move from the map to
the canvas. And amidst it all, Liang ties his soul to the seascape
and its constant drama. Although the Chinese-born painter didn't
actually see the ocean until he was a teenager, he knows it colors,
shapes and moods intimately. "I was 19 the first time I saw the ocean," says the 43-year-old Los Angeles artist. "I loved the sound of the waves and the colors and shapes. Every wave comes out a different shape. It's never ever the same." Admitting that having a studio by the ocean would be a dream come true, Liang stresses that land-scapes and seascapes satisfy his drive to explore color and shape in his art.  "Marine themes are my favorite subjects," he says. "I love the shad-ows, the reflections and the colors. Color is number one in my painting. Color is a good reason to put my mood on canvas, but structure is also important. If you have color but no structure, your painting won't be right. I learned at the academy to keep my eye on the color, always the color and the shape." Passionate to get the mood right, Liang spent his early years as a plein air painter, but the changing light frustrated him. "I did a lot of plein air in China, using big canvases, but now I do a combination of outdoor and indoor ~painting1," he says. "I found that the lighting changed so fast that it also changed the struc-ture, and it was hard to capture things in three hours. Now I shoot a lot of outdoor photos to combine them for a good studio painting." Liang's extensive collection of digital photos, which includes 1,300 shots of Carmel and 1,400 of Canyon de Chelly, allows him to mine the images on his computer for just the right expression of a favorite loca-tion. "Before digital, I spent a ton of money on photos," he says. This way I save a lot of time and money. Born in Canton, China in 1960, just before Chairman Mao's ascent to power, Liang stands between two generations, benefiting from both the classic training of old world China and the new era of technolo-gy. The poweful chapters of recent a Chinese history influenced his life and his art. Just a child at the start of the Cultural Revolution, he watched his father forego law school-"In China there were no lawyers at that time," he says to become president of the family's car factory, then move from businessman to farm worker, according to Mao's formula for "re-education.' The family struggled as Liang's mother attempted to support her six children during her husband's two-year absence. Liang, the youngest child, still remembers the hardships the family endured, yet he also recalls his growing interest in drawing and his great attracting to art. Stuck on a communal farm after high school, he fanned his hopes of pursuing art by applying to the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts. He was accepted into the academy, where classic training readied him for painting and design work in the theatrical industry. Liang later worked for several years at the Canton Opera Institute but, as Mao's grip on China slowly loosened, he found new freedom in the fine arts. Liang, then 27, knew that greater opportuni-ties existed on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, however. In 1987 he took a leap of faith and immigrated to the United States, followed a few years later by his mother, father and several siblings. "In China it was very hard to support myself doing art, because others can't afford to buy art there," Liang says, adding that the transition to a new country was somewhat difficult because of the language barrier. "I came here on a student visa. I had no money, so I had to find a job but I didn't know the language, so it was very hard." |
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