East Vancouver artist Angel Kao sometimes likes embedding messages in her digital works. Take her mural, What’s The Rush?, which she painted on the wall of the Jackson’s General store building at 1490 Kingsway in Vancouver.
“There’s a lot of traffic going down Kingsway,” Kao tells Pancouver by phone. “If cars are driving through pretty quickly, I wanted to make the text really bold and big and easy to read. And I wanted to remind drivers—and also myself, too—what’s the rush when you’re driving?”
Along the bottom of the black and white mural, she drew a cheetah, which is the fastest land animal in the world. Riding on top is a sloth, which is the world’s slowest mammal.
“It’s the polar opposite,” Kao says with a chuckle. “I thought it was funny.”
Kao is a versatile full-time artist who makes her living designing brands, merchandise, packaging, and surfaces, such as fabric patterns and vehicle wraps. Her wildly imaginative and often colourful digital illustrations and paintings incorporate comic, punk, and street-art elements.
“I grew up watching anime and just [being] glued to the screen with dragon motifs, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor, Digimon, and Pokeman,” Kao reveals.
Over time, Kao developed a fascination with Japanese folklore and mythology. She’s particularly enamoured with spirits known as yōkai.
“I really liked the stories of each character and how they looked and how weird they were,” she adds. “So, I definitely pay tribute to those characters in my art work, as well as to the Ghibli movies, for sure.”
Kao focuses on eyes, hands, and mouth
Kao was born in Taipei and moved to Canada at the age of seven. She describes her art as “surreal dreamscape”. Others, however, have told her that it reminds them of the lowbrow art movement.
She often embraces themes of life and death or space and time in her digital work, doodles, and paintings. And Kao loves drawing attention to body parts, such as the eyes, hands, and mouth, which are so critical in communication.
“Those are powerful tools to me and they come up in my art a lot.”
Kao is one of many artists participating in the fourth edition the Create! Eastside Arts Festival, which runs from July 22 to 28 in Vancouver. The weeklong event features outdoor visual and performing arts in Strathcona Park (857 Malkin Avenue). In addition, there will be ticketed art workshops and performances at local breweries, studios, and other pop-up locations.
As part of the festival, Kao will offer two Doodles & Zine Making workshops. The first takes place from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday (July 23) for those 19 and older at Off The Rail Brewing (1351 Adanac Street). The second is at 12:30 p.m. next Saturday (July 27) in Strathcona Park. Tickets are $35 and are available through the Create! Eastside Arts Festival website.
“I teach different ways to draw the eyes, mouth, face and eyebrows to give characters more expression,” Kao explains. “Then, we’ll move on to creating an eight-page zine comic of their choice of whatever subject.”
She hopes that her workshops inspire people to look at different aspects of their life experiences and bring them into their artwork and creative expression.
NFTs launched artistic career
Kao didn’t initially set out to become an artist, even though she began drawing at the age of five. She studied tourism management, but she didn’t feel connected to a career in this industry. So, she went back to school interactive design.
That led to a job as the brand manager, a.k.a. Swag Lady, at East Side Games, Kao reveals on her website.
“I didn’t start to embody being an artist until I was 30,” Kao tells Pancouver.
Her life took a turn as a result of making non-fungible tokens, otherwise known as NFTs. Prior to their sudden burst of popularity four years ago, she was part of a group of artists placing these digital works on NFT Club House.
“I sort of found my community in that kind of way,” Kao recalls. “I had a couple of people say that my artwork reminds them of Robert Crumb.”
In February of 2021, she put some of her art on OpenSea but didn’t do any marketing. Kao was delighted when a collector showed some interest and bought one of her digital works.
Nowadays, Kao says that working with colours is probably the most time-consuming aspect of her process with digital art. As for inspiration, she often relies on what’s bubbling around in her unconscious mind while she’s sleeping.
“I dream quite a bit—almost every day—and I have a dream journal,” Kao discloses. “A lot of my art influence comes from that.”
Event details
Create! Eastside Arts Festival will present Angel Kao’s Doodles & Zine Making Workshops on July 23 and 27. The festival runs from July 22 to 28 in Strathcona Park (857 Malkin Avenue) and various pop-up locations.
Learn more about Angel Kao by visiting her website or following her on Instagram @KaoDraws and @KaoDesigns. Follow Pancouver on X @PancouverMedia and on Instagram @PancouverMedia.
