LIU: My name is Dik Liu. I’m 62. I was born in Macau and raised in Hong Kong, but I came to the United States when I was around 11. I mostly lived on the East Coast. When I first came here, I lived in D.C. for a couple of years, then Boston, which is really where I was raised. After college, I went to Connecticut and lived in New Haven for a few years. Then I came to New York because, at that point and even now, this is where a lot of artists are. I figured it would be a good place to live, develop my work, and be around other artists.
BUHRMAN: So the first question I'm going to ask is, how you define your creative identity, and what early influences shape the way you think about your work today.
LIU: What is my identity? I’m a painter. And what shaped my identity? That’s a little bit harder to answer. Mostly, I work from observation, so I’m curious about what the world looks like. I also spent a lot of time studying art, so I’m always looking at its history and trying to examine the theory behind it. I’m continually trying to absorb what I learn when I go to museums and look at art. I try to really observe what I’m seeing and incorporate that into my own work. It’s like a decade-long investigation.
BUHRMAN: And then for the second part: what early influences did you have growing up?
LIU: I mean, because I work from observation, most of my influence really comes from nature. But I also learned to paint from a few very traditional, realistic painters. So I would say one of my main influences comes through my training — from people who paint realistically and who, early on in my life, really taught me how to paint.
BUHRMAN: So when did you first realize your creativity could become a practice and not just like a hobby?
LIU: I don’t know if I ever made that distinction. I think when I was younger, when I first started looking at art around 13 or 14, I didn’t really think of it as a professional pursuit. Then, when I went to college, I realized there was really nothing else I was interested in other than painting. I tried out a few other things, but ultimately, painting was where my major influence came from. A lot of that came from the traditions of Western painting: how artists over the years have thought about their paintings, how those ideas influenced their work, what they discovered, and what I could do with those discoveries in my own work.
BUHRMAN: The next question I was gonna ask was, is another profession you wanted to pursue or were interested in excluding painting?
LIU: I mean, no, I love history, especially American history, but I never really saw that as a profession, like becoming a historian. With art, I don’t know — for me, it’s just what I do. So I’ve never really made the distinction you’re talking about, where one thing becomes the other, or where a hobby or avocation becomes a vocation. For me, it was very seamless: the way I grew up, then got into art, then went from art into teaching, came to New York, developed my work, and tried to build a community of artists around me.
BUHRMAN: What parts of your background still quietly shape your work today?
LIU: Yeah, I think that’s harder for me to answer. I mean, we’re kind of accumulations of our past, right?
BUHRMAN:Yeah, like growing up — does where you grew up shape how you work?
LIU: When I grew up in Asia in the 70s, there really wasn’t a whole lot of art around me. It was only after I came to D.C., and started going to museums on my own as a child, that I began to discover it. I used to love exploring the city, and in D.C., I would go into museums, look at art, and realize there was this whole world I didn’t know about and didn’t really have access to before. Art is such a big world. There’s a whole body of literature around it: the history of it, the practice of it, the criticism of it. It’s really a world of its own. I suppose, for me, one of the attractions was that as an artist, you can never stop learning, discovering, and finding new things. I realized that was something that could really engage me, and something I could do for my whole life.
BUHRMAN: That’s really the main reason why I’m making this project. I want people from different fields to learn from one another. I also do photography, so I feel like I could learn from you about composition, lighting, color, and things like that.
LIU: Yeah, I think it’s always important for artists to learn from other fields — different methods, approaches, and ways of thinking. I think it’s good to have a broad range of influences and not just focus on one thing. It’s a lot healthier that way.
BUHRMAN: I integrate my photography and graphic design work most of the time. I usually use my own photos in my design work.
LIU: And where can I see your work?
BUHRMAN: I can show you my website after this. So, who are your biggest inspirations in life? They could be current inspirations, people who inspired you growing up, or whoever comes to mind.
LIU: I think the person who probably influenced me the most was my painting teacher when I was around your age — George. When I met him, I was about 16 or 17, and he was in his late 40s or early 50s. He came with a wealth of knowledge from his own training and education, and he really shaped me as an artist. Both in life and in art, he taught me how to look at things seriously and how to really conduct the work.
BUHRMAN: What's something outside of your field that helps you think or create?
LIU: Well, I love music. I like going to concerts, and I’m a very serious music listener. I listen to a lot of classical music, mostly from the 19th century. I like big Romantic works from that period. That’s the kind of music that really moves me.
BUHRMAN: Where does the project start for you? An idea, a reference, or do you just start painting?
LIU: Usually, I have about three or four painting ideas in my head at a time. So it’s really a matter of going through a backlog of them. As you’re painting, the painting begins to ask questions and probe the artist. From there, you start to come up with different visual issues that you want to explore. It could be something very mundane. I could be working on one painting and think, “You know what, this red is kind of interesting. Let’s see if I can use it to make a completely different painting.” Those are the kinds of ideas that come to you. For me, they all overlap, and one painting becomes a continuation of another.
BUHRMAN: Yeah, I think when I’m making my work, I always feel like there’s something else to do. If I have one idea, another idea usually comes to mind.
LIU: Yeah, exactly. I think as artists, you want to stay alert to that, because that’s a large part of how we grow.
BUHRMAN: What does a typical day look like when you're in the middle of a project?
LIU: Usually, if I’m not teaching, I get up, drink coffee, and maybe surf the web a little, but not really pay attention to it, to be honest. Then I make an inventory of what I want to accomplish that day. After that, I just go about doing what I need to do. I try to have each day more or less planned out before I get started. I think that’s helpful for some people. Some people are very disciplined and can just start working, but for me, I need to sit down, lock in, look at my calendar, and figure out what I need to do that day. Usually, I do all the mundane things first, so that when I get to painting, I don’t get interrupted, and I don’t need to worry about miscellaneous tasks.
BUHRMAN: Yeah, I always get distracted while I’m working because I start thinking about other things I have to do. Then I go do the other thing and forget about the work I was originally doing. But right now, everyone has a lot going on. I was going to ask what kind of environment helps you create your best work, but I would assume it’s your studio.
LIU: Yeah, mostly my studio. In the summer, sometimes I go plein air painting with a few faculty members from Pratt. Sometimes we get together, head up to the Catskills, and paint for a bit. But mostly, my environment has been the studio. Since I was in my late teens, I’ve always had a studio that looks kind of like this. I usually have very little natural or artificial lighting, because for my work, I need a constant source of light. It can’t change at all. So I’ve always had a darkened studio. At times, I’ve had a studio outside of where I live, but never too far away. When I was in Connecticut, my studio was about three blocks from where I lived. Because I sometimes work late into the night, I don’t want to have a long commute. I just want to be close and be able to go home easily.
BUHRMAN: But you live here now, right?
LIU: Yep.
BUHRMAN: How long have you been living here?
LIU: I’ve been in New York since 1987. I moved into this place around 1989, so quite a while ago. When I moved here, Williamsburg had a lot of crime, and it was really dangerous to live here. There were a few artists who were brave enough to get studio spaces around here, but most artists back then wanted to live in places like SoHo, which was the big art area. When I came here, I had just gotten into school and didn’t have much money, so I needed an affordable place to live. I also wanted somewhere quiet, where people wouldn’t bother me. That was important. When I first came to this area, it was mostly light industrial, so it was very different from what it is now. A lot of artists who came here were looking for space, and that was really what you wanted: enough room to work.
BUHRMAN: Yeah, I’m really excited to move. We’ve always wanted to go back to Thailand. So, what part of your process do you find the most frustrating, and what part do you find the most rewarding?
LIU: The most frustrating part is when I’m working on something, and I know what I want to do, but I can’t quite get there. Then I try all these different possibilities, so sometimes finding the right solution is the most frustrating part. As for the most rewarding part, there’s nothing in particular. When I do something that I like, it lifts my mood. But the way I’m shaped, I usually ignore that part and just move on to something else.
BUHRMAN: You know, everyone is different. What about the most rewarding part?
LIU: Just being able to get something done, look at it, and realize that compared to what I did before, I made a little bit of progress — that’s really the most rewarding part. As an artist, it’s rewarding to find yourself in a position where, before finishing a painting, you couldn’t do something like that before. Then, by the end, you reach that goal. That’s pretty rewarding.
BUHRMAN: How do you know when a piece is finished?
LIU: Usually, when I work on something, a really pretentious way to put it is that I stop when I stop learning from the piece. A lot of times, I stop when whatever I set out to do has been done. Sometimes I work on a painting for a few weeks, and sometimes I work on one for a few months. But I can usually tell when I’m close. I’ll think, “In about two days, I can get to where I need to go.”
BUHRMAN: So have you ever had a project fail or not turn out how you expected?
LIU: Oh, yeah, especially in drawing. Drawing is one of those things where you need to do thousands of them to become pretty good at it. There have been a few times in my life when I ran into painting problems that I wasn’t able to solve, and I wasn’t sure what the solution was. But that’s part of the adventure, right? You don’t always know where you’re going, but that’s what makes it worth doing.
BUHRMAN: How many paintings are you working on right now?
LIU: Right now, I’m just working with a little sketch. I finished the self-portrait, and I finished a couple of figure paintings that are pretty much done. I could show them to you. See those blue boxes at the bottom? Those all have paintings inside. A lot of them are paintings I’m working on, though a couple of them are my palettes. For the time being, I’m moving on to something else, so I put them inside those boxes. They’re completely sealed, and the painting stays in the same shape, at the same level of wetness. They can stay there for a couple of months. I think I have about three paintings in there that I’m working on. Most of them are model paintings. Sometimes I don’t have the model coming here for a couple of months, so we take a break. Then, when the model comes back, I can take out the painting, and it will be just like I painted it yesterday because it has the same level of wetness and oiliness. It kind of preserves it. When I do a cycle of those paintings, I put clove oil in there. Clove oil is a really interesting thing in oil painting. It can keep the painting wet for an extremely long period of time. I mix it directly into the paint. Artists have been using clove oil for hundreds of years, but now not many people use it anymore.
BUHRMAN: What would you say was the breakthrough point of your career?
LIU: That’s a little harder to answer. There were a few breakthroughs, really. I think getting into school was a big one in terms of growing as an artist. Then, being in the studio, it took me a couple of years to get to a point where I felt like I could paint without hearing other people criticizing my work while I was painting — to quiet that voice and turn off everyone else’s opinions so I could pursue something more singular. That was important, and it happened a few years after school. I remember one day, when I was in my 30s, I was walking down Lexington Avenue and looked up at a building. The sun was hitting it in a certain way, and at that point I was feeling very confused about my work. But when I looked at that light hitting the building, I realized that all the confusion I had was unnecessary, because what I really wanted to do was just capture the light. That was a huge breakthrough for me.
BUHRMAN: Yeah, like I said, you taught me color theory and lighting, and I feel like that really helped me with my photography as well.
LIU: Light is fun. It’s fascinating, right?
BUHRMAN: Yeah, I’ve been really interested in lighting and shadows recently. I just went to Tokyo, and I was really captivated by all the shadows there. I feel like cities have so many different kinds of shadows and so many different types of light. It’s really interesting to look at, and I find it fascinating.
LIU: I hope you continue to investigate that. I really do. You should keep doing the work that you’re doing.
BUHRMAN: So what's your favorite piece of work that you've done?
LIU: Well, most of them are gone now. Actually, that painting over there — I’ve been carrying that around for over 40 years. That was a milestone for me because I didn’t know if it could be done, and I didn’t know if I could do it. So that one is a big one for me. The cloth is silk. Some of them are silk, and some of them are velvet.
BUHRMAN: So do you consider your work to be beautiful? And what does beauty mean to you?
LIU: I know they’re beautiful, but beauty is not really the goal. It’s not even the process. When I was younger, I was reading a book by Robert Henri, an early 20th-century painter who was also a good art teacher. He said that when you go after beauty, all you get is prettiness. Beauty reveals itself through the process of trying to realize what you’re doing. So for me, beauty is really a pictorial solution. I know people look at the work and say it’s really beautiful, but that’s not where my mind is. I think the paintings arrive that way because the color becomes light, and light is satisfying.
BUHRMAN: But would you call other people’s work beautiful? Like, if you saw something, would you describe it that way?
LIU: Yeah, I give myself that liberty with other people’s work. I would never call my own work beautiful, I think. But I would definitely call other people’s work beautiful.
BUHRMAN: So, do you think about time when you create — like the past, present, and future? When you’re painting, do you think about the past, the present, or the future?
LIU: Oh yeah. I mean, the amount of time I could work on that painting was about three hours, so I had to keep going back to it. That painting is really made up of different moments in time, spliced and choreographed together. One reason I listen to a lot of classical music is because I used to do a lot of plein air painting, and the music could actually help me time the movements in the work. At this movement in the music, I knew I was supposed to be working on this part of the painting. So, in the present, I kind of pace myself that way. But as an artist, you also think about things that happened in the past. You think about other artists who arrived at certain solutions and whether you want to arrive at the same solution in the way they did, or whether you want to try something new that you haven’t really seen before and don’t know is actually doable.
BUHRMAN: What do you think your work says about the time that we live in now?
LIU: Well, time right now feels like it’s moving very quickly. The work that I do requires focus and concentration. The artists whose work I like best are the ones where, when I look at their paintings, it seems like they had all the time in the world to resolve each passage. They never seem to compromise in any way because of time. But when I look across the centuries, there are very few artists who strike me as being able to do that.
BUHRMAN: What is something you’re still trying to understand or explore through your work — whether it’s about yourself or about anything else?
LIU: I think when you’re painting, you always learn about yourself. One of the benefits of painting is that through the process, you discover a lot about who you are. You learn where your bad habits are. You learn where you’re stubborn. You learn how your mind can go askew. There isn’t really one clear sense of what the future is going to look like for me. I think that’s what makes life fun, because you really don’t know where you’re going. You can start out in the morning thinking you’re going one way, and by the end of the day, the painting can tell you to go in a completely different direction. It’s always satisfying to accomplish a goal that you started with. But I think in art, you never really have those great “Eureka” moments, at least not in the studio. Maybe you have them in the museum, but in the studio, you never really have that moment of, “That’s exactly what I’m after,” because by the time you get there, your mind is already going somewhere else.
BUHRMAN: Where do you see yourself in five years?
LIU: Well, that’s a good question. In five years, I don’t know if I’ll still be in New York, to be honest. I like New York, but I think it can be a little rough. Unless someone has a lot of money, it’s not really the most livable place. So I don’t really know where I would go from here. But in about five years, I’ll probably move on to a different phase in my life — maybe being done with teaching, or maybe something else.
BUHRMAN: How do you want to be remembered? If you want to be remembered?
LIU: Well, I want people to remember that Dik was someone who spent a lot of time doing things like putting oil paint on canvas and being completely absorbed in that process. I guess what I want to be remembered for is my passion toward my work and the way I approached it.
BUHRMAN: Yeah, I think the few times I went to your class, you showed me how passionate someone can be about their art. I was never really surrounded by artists growing up, and you were one of the first teachers, or first artists, to show me how passionate a person can be about their work.
LIU: Yeah, you need to be passionate in order to make your best work. You only live once, and you don’t want to get to a certain point and feel like you didn’t really enjoy it. That’s a rough place to be. I know people like that, and it’s a really difficult position to be in — people who never really find their passion. It could be that they didn’t know there was a passion for them to find, or maybe they’re perfectly content without it. But I know I don’t want to be on that list.
BUHRMAN: Yeah. So the final question I have is: what is one piece of advice you would give to young artists and designers today?
LIU: Stay curious. I teach in grad school as well, so I often talk to young artists. Sometimes they seem like they already know all the answers, and that always makes me feel kind of sad because I feel like they’re missing out.