Lucy Cheung Crushed Evil

Today’s interview is with Lucy Cheung. She has a whole universe of art and inspirations on the web, that she updates regularly. Find out more about this fascinating person by reading the interview.

A. You work very hard and do a lot of research. You post daily drawings. You have a website, a blog and a , besides and , crafts markets, drawing marathons,…. This complex online and offline world seems as though you are a very hard working woman. It seems that you are very motivated to create your art. Do you sleep at night or do you work night and day? Do you work so intensively that you think only about your art/dream about your art? What is the difference between your Tumblr blog and Crushed Evil?

There’s never enough hours in the day really! I try to work normal hours unless there’s a pressing deadline as I’m a zombie with not enough sleep. Art and creativity is just all-consuming, it’s hard to not be thinking about it 24/7. But this can get overwhelming sometimes and I have to force myself to take a break and do something else. The tumblr is more of an addendum to the main blog Crushevil, for images that don’t warrant a full blog post or a reminder of things I want to look into more thoroughly.

B. I noticed that you are fascinated by patterns. You say that you love bright colours. How important is the aesthetic look of the costumes for you? I think you are also drawn in by the stories of arranged weddings, of sadness in important moments of life as weddings, etc. Often the bright colours seem to hide the sadness of the underlying truth (women being forced into marriage to elder men, brutality towards ethnic minorities,….). Is this so? How about colours in your own work, do you think of stories when you create your creatures and masks and costumes, and if so are they rather sad? Or are they abstract and neutral for you?

Yeah, the aesthetic is very important, I can be quite controlling and restrictive on colour combinations and the materials I use which results in a particular look. I suppose the first thought of bright colours for most people is happy and cheerful but they can also be used to symbolise danger or for protection. I prefer to work letting my unconscious take control of what happens, so I don’t always have a specific idea in my head before I sit down to make something. It might be a shape I want to use or just a nice kind of paper I’ve found that I want to work around. Generally I think my work is more about mystery and a sort of unknown rather than a sadness. Maybe it’s more of a “quietness”.

C. You create drawing with mask-like bodies and hair in many parts of the bodies. Do these creatures have stories? Are they representative for a sort of “other world” or “ethnic minority in the art world”? Or do they have another meaning?

They definitely belong to another “other world”, at the moment they’re kind of just faces and bodies that I’ve been obsessed with drawing variations on for a while now. I think their actual stories are something I will explore in the future…

D. Your art is related to fascination with evil and dark worlds and ethnic minorities, different cultures and misbeliefs, beliefs, traditions.
Do you think this is partly so because of your personal story? Being a British born Chinese artist brings with it a search for identity in a world where you were immersed as a baby but that you maybe didn’t fully perceive as your own? Can you talk about your personal story in relation to the themes for your art?

There’s an underlying feeling of inbetween-ness that I can’t help because I don’t feel fully either British or Chinese which has probably contributed to my interest in all things that are “other”. There’s a lot of ritual in Chinese culture that didn’t make any sense to me growing up in the UK, but since beginning my blog I’ve discovered a lot of British folklore rituals that are just as mind boggling.

E. You sell you work far too cheaply on Etsy? Why so?

Haha, do you really think so? People should buy now before my prices go up! Pricing is really difficult for me, I think my prices are fair but not extortionate. I’m interested in sharing my work and I’m always up for doing trades.

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F. What are your dreams professionally? Who would you like to work for or cooperate with? Who would be your favourite client? What cause would you support and with what means?

I would love to be able to quit my day job and concentrate on my art full time, do more projects, maybe something audio visual, animation or clothing. I’m obsessed with sewing clothes at the moment and am envisaging combining this with my drawing works somehow. I don’t have any dream clients, if anyone out there is on the same wavelength get in .

J. You love working with paper, why so?
It’s super versatile, fairly cheap, readily available and totally transformable. Magic material. cheap nike air max

K. Who is your favourite artist? black nike free run cheap

Hmm that’s a tough question. I’ll say Henry Darger. I love his obsessiveness, singular vision and total devotion to his work.