Talk 123
Finding Your Passion & Love
Talk 1
THE CURIOUS MIND
Good morning, everyone. My name is Charles Chau.
To many of you, I may come forward today simply as an artist. However, my career path to becoming an artist wasn’t straightforward – there was no natural progression to being before you today, speaking to you as a professional artist.
I was born in in 1963, Hong Kong, then a British colony. Like most children in Hong Kong those days, studying hard was very much the norm – the only thing to do. Sure, we did have casual ‘play’ times, but it was all study, study, and study – that seemed to be our only purpose; the one-and-only-one objective of life.
My working-class parents promised me, “You can do whatever you want once you get into university!” The implication was, “You cannot date a girl, and there is definitely no falling in love, before you secure your university admission”. Television times were limited; everything at home was focused on studying for exams and getting good grades. Even the food prepared by my mom was for that purpose. She cooked recipes for brain enhancement – very Chinese!
No doubt against their wishful thoughts, for my parents, I wasn’t such an obedient boy. Do you think the boy listened?
Actually, partially yes and partially no. On the one hand, much of my time and energy was spent on study. Luckily, my parents had enrolled me in one of the competitive boys’ schools where we were schooled to get good grades in the public exams. Besides, the only ‘big’ exam was the University Entrance Exam – a kind of ‘GCE A-level’ equivalent – that didn’t come till we were 17 or 18 years old. On the other hand, I still had personal time, which I spent on interests that helped to shape the ‘me’ I am today, but let’s start with a key turning point after my post University Exam.
My university entrance exam was in 1982, some forty years ago. My grades were good. I applied to the University of Hong Kong School of Architecture as that appeared to me – still a rebellious boy! – to be the only interesting faculty with career promise. I was accepted on to the course.
In the early 1980s, there was only one architectural school in Hong Kong, offering a mere 40 places for Year 1 architecture students. This I still find peculiar, considering the population of Hong Kong at the time was over 6 million and the cosmopolitan nature of the city. For the architectural student, it meant we were pretty much guaranteed a career with promising job prospects upon graduation. True, the prospective income of an architect would not make one rich, but architecture was one of the most admired professions and a route to becoming part of the professional middle class.
However, less than a year into my architectural studies, I told my mom, “Sorry, but I am quitting my university studies.” My dad, on hearing the news, was very emotional. “What? You want to quit? You are only 19 years old! What are you going to do with your life?” He would not accept that I didn’t want to complete university, given how hard he had fought to get me to that stage. What followed was a parent/child tug-of-war. Pressurised by tears and remonstrations from my parents, with the help of my architecture professor, I managed to gain a transfer within the University’s Faculty of Arts to read Fine Arts and Philosophy. My parents came to accept the re-admission compromise, and their anger cooled.
Why did I quit my architecture studies and the prospect of a promising career?
The answer has both a brutal reality and a romantic cover.
The shameful truth was that, although I had completed my first-year architecture project, having skipped so many classes and lectures throughout the year, I had left myself completely unprepared for the year-end written exams. This brutal reality having dawned on me, I quit without taking the exams. The Department Head wrote to say that alternate arrangements could be made for my exams, but I could not bring myself to take up the offer. I was simply scared and just wanted to escape.
The romantic cover came later when the school’s student association asked me to write an essay for their paper. I wrote a piece with the movie line quote, ‘If you give up dreaming, you’ll die’, telling my fellow schoolmates I had left to chase my dream and that the dream wasn’t architecture.
I have never forgotten this decision or its lessons.
For me, it is not whether I regretted the decision or about the merits or deficiencies of architectural education; it is about why I allowed myself to get into the situation by skipping so many classes. What was the ‘missing thing’ I was trying to seek?
The first lesson was simple and straightforward: put your full effort – or at least the majority of your attention and focus – on to key priorities. Without this, I realised that nothing is guaranteed and all is doomed to fall apart and lead to failure.
The second lesson, however, wasn’t as easy: how to know what profession to pursue through a lifetime? What is ‘the thing’ that is worth thinking about every day and working on every month for years or even decades to come? It’s not that I think that people do not have dreams – I am sure that everyone does – but more how do we come to find what is worth spending our whole life working on. How determined are we to discover that? Does our determination waver with self-sabotage, doubts and questions? The doubts and questioning, “Am I good enough even if I pour in loads of effort?”, pile up and so on it goes.
I kept those lessons and that questioning close to my heart. I wanted to be ready for everything I decided to pursue. I told myself that, should I determine on ‘the thing’, I would put in the extra effort and full attention needed. I would pursue my dream without fear.
Did I learn? I would probably say ‘no’ in terms of focus and efforts, at least not in the early years. When I got re-admitted to the University’s Faculty of Arts to study Philosophy and Fine Arts, I was still distracted. I had taken on several jobs that interested me in addition to studying. I thought I could handle multiple tasks, but I simply couldn’t give any of them my best shot. I should have been more single-minded and focused. The lesson I should have learned was to ‘focus’. It was only when I got older – probably only some ten years ago - that I began to learn about letting pass other lesser priorities even if they appear to be tempting opportunities.
Luckily, I landed a colourful first career right after my undergraduate studies. At just 23 years old and just having graduated, I was hired as Editor and Art Director for the Hong Kong editions of several magazines, including as the Founding Editor of Car & Driver magazine. At 24 years of age, I was appointed Photography Director of Playboy magazine. The top accolade for me was becoming the youngest Chief Editor in what was the 50-year-history of the most iconic cultural magazine in Hong Kong: City Magazine (號外) at only 25 years of age. I also joint ventured the launch of a Taiwan Edition for City Magazine in Taipei the subsequent year.
My first career during my 20s, was predominantly in the magazine and creative media business. I was also active in art direction for a number of music albums and several pictorial books for Hong Kong pop music stars. I art directed a music album cover for Danny Chan, worked on the many marketing campaigns and cover designs for the ‘Music Factory’, a new independent label led by the Chinese Folk/Rock Godfather Lo Ta-Yu, a pictorial book for Leslie Cheung titled Stark Impressions, and another pictorial book Beyond in Africa for the god-gifted and fearless rock group ‘Beyond’. It was an exciting time for Hong Kong’s pop music scene.
Indeed, one of my first business trips was to take more than 20,000 slides of Leslie Cheung’s film footage to Imagica in Tokyo, the only one of the two labs in Asia (the alternative was a lab in Australia) that can properly process Kodachrome. That was in 1988.
Looking back, I now see that time is a continuum: today is made up of many yesterdays.
My mom told me recently that she spotted my keen interest in art from childhood. I now know that the seeds were sown in my early childhood and blossomed during my youth. When I was at primary school, at age 6 or 7, at weekends when I did not have ‘to study’, she took me to our neighbour's home for calligraphy lessons. Our neighbour, the Chinese Ink Artist, Professor Xiao Lisheng (1919-83) was a Lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. My lessons with him allowed me to play with the ink and brushes on his big table in the centre of his living room. He also wanted me to be disciplined and would ‘order’ me to practise a horizontal stroke ‘一’ all afternoon, a hundred times or more. This horizontal stroke is the first, basic Chinese character ‘one’. Just a simple horizontal stroke. Since that early training, the ‘line’ has formed a recurring theme of my artistic work.
Later, from 1977-79, between the ages of 14 and 15 and still in secondary school, I took a two-year evening diploma course in design at the First Institute of Art & Design, a local vocational school that gained a reputation for training young people who would later become great designers and artists. I still recall the draftsmanship homework that required us to use a blade ruling pen – the precursor of the needle-in-tube plotting pen – together with a ruler to produce mechanical drawings of sets of cylinders by drawing parallel, gradient lines. That was a hard training in the perfecting of visual spacing and achieving consistency in the thickness of lines.
In another sketching class, the teacher’s instructions were: “The line should not be broken”, “Do not use short, broken, overlapping lines, “Try to finish the line in one continuous stroke”, “I want to see the line felt with energy”. This early training first awakened in me an appreciation of the quality of the hand-drawn or painted line. I know – I am talking about just a line – but it is much more than that. I learned about how the deployment of different media and tools can produce a wide variety of rich, beautiful lines and strokes.
The quality of ‘line’ was the very first thing I learnt from the intense but sporadic training of my boyhood. I benefited from the many great tutors at First Institute of Art and Design, namely Cheng Meng who hold class of Chinese calligraphy, Ho Chung Keung on English typography design, Lo Siu Hei on Chinese typography design, and of course the Dean and Founder Lui Lap-Fun.
From 1981-82, between the ages of 17 and 18, just after taking my O-level exams and two years before taking my A-levels, I enrolled on a one-year evening painting course at the Linghai Academy of Arts where I began to learn about ‘colour’. For the first time I heard it said: “There is no such thing as black-black in the world of colour.”
One evening, at the start of a watercolour class, the tutor asked all of us to remove the black tube from our assorted deck of tubes, saying. “Tonight, we will not use the black tube as black. If you want to paint black, create it by mixing up other colours.” His explanation was: “Even the darkest black hair will show a tint of brown. The darkest black shadow will show a hint of other colours such as purple”. At first, I wasn’t sure if the instructor was entirely correct. My thinking was: “Surely nothing is absolutely ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in art?”, but his teaching pushed me to look more deeply at reflections and I began to work on the contextual influence of objects and their colours. From that moment onwards, I became more colour conscious. I am now especially alert to hues and values, tones and shades, contrasts and harmonies, cold and warm colours, and how objects reflect their light sources and diminish into darkness. Before this understanding, ‘black’ to me was a dead colour – a colour with an absence of light.
Finally, before being admitted to my university studies, I spent the summer taking various art and photography classes from Life Drawing classes at the University of Hong Kong Extra Mural Department –formerly the HKU Space College – to Photography classes at the then newly opened Hong Kong Photo Centre. I simply did not want to let any chance of absorbing myself in arts learning go by. As you may well imagine, having taken photography and other drawing classes, ‘composition’ – why you include or exclude a subject in the ‘frame’ – became the third most important element that I learned in my life-long journey of exploration. Of course, there were many others that I picked up from my elders here and there, such as expression of forms from Mr. Benedict Wang at the HKU Life Drawing class via tuition on lines or strokes.
One summer during my architecture studies, Mr. Lee Wai On, an accomplished artist who taught us Chinese ink painting at HKU School of Architecture, asked me to work for him on a fresco painting commission for a hotel lobby wall in Singapore. This was also a memorable experience in the many experiences that helped to shape the ‘me’ in me today. During that trip, I learnt a lot about planning and execution.
For me, curiosity and desire to learn does not ever end. Today, I am still learning – at present, it is in the use of various software.
The first stage of my career was blessed by the golden opportunities that Hong Kong in the eighties presented. I am referring not to the opportunities presented to me as an artist by curators – the terms ‘curator’ or ‘curation’ were not widely popular at the time – but to those I created in my role as a magazine editor. The editor’s role is much like an art curator: both roles are about identifying emerging themes, working with contributors – writers in the case of magazine editors – and producing visual formats with their own aesthetics – stories in the case of the editor. I enjoyed orchestrating all that a magazine involves. I also learned a lot along the way that has helped my understanding as an artist of the curation process.
One example of such learning was the Playboy magazine Art Directors seminar in 1987 that was attended by representatives of all 14 editions of Playboy worldwide. A New York art director demonstrated the importance of creating visual ‘flow’ – content versus advertisements - by mocking up an issue using black and white rectangles as a means of checking the satisfactory pagination flow. The black rectangles represented advertisements and the white rectangles represented content. It struck me at the time that the flow of a magazine was not unlike the black and white notes of a musical piece. Breathing spaces as if pauses in musical notes are all important parts in making the whole piece ‘flow’. There were many more such learnings over the years.
I learned a lot on the job. As an art director, I had the benefit of working with many top photographers and designers in Hong Kong and the wider region, including Mr. Sam Wong, Mr. Kevin Orpin and Mr. Alain Yip to name just a few. They taught me so much. I thank them all for their love and friendship.
Talk 2
VENTURING OUT
The year 1990 is significant for me, as it is the year I married Rainbow. Three years later, in 1993 – exactly forty years ago – my wife and I emigrated from Hong Kong to Canada.
The 1980s – when I was in my 20s – represented my ‘first’ career of making a mark in the magazine and creative media industry. The mid-1990s onwards would see a move into a more rigorous and disciplined ‘second’ career.
Shortly before we emigrated to Canada, I founded a financial public relations firm working mainly on initial public offerings. I have always loved ‘concepts’. Founding the company involved a first deep dive into finance and business literature. My interest in the concept of those worlds was sparked! I met some remarkable entrepreneurs, one of whom convinced me of the benefits of taking a further degree – this time in ‘business’.
Canada was becoming home and I was fulfilled by a simple life of fishing and reading with ‘hobby’ art making in the mix, but I was still way too young and financially not in a sustainable position to continue that given I was barely 30. After some research, I decided on London for my MBA, thus embarking on the new journey of my second career.
The impact of my learnings at the London Business School, one of the top b-schools in Europe, have been long-lasting. It might have first appeared that b-school or business have nothing to do with my current art-making, but while writing these speaking notes, I have formed the following reflections of what I learned and practised during this second phase of my career that I think are of interest and relevance to note.
The first was the introduction to structural thinking.
In a way, structural thinking is analogous to ‘analytical’ thinking or to ‘critical’ thinking in the philosophical tradition, in which I received my training in Philosophy for my undergrad at HKU, given that both involve thinking in a logical, coherent manner.
Some argue that artists need not be logical or that somehow artists’ works cannot and should not be comprehended by simple logic alone. I accept that is true in part. Certain great works always have an inexplicable emotional element that is beyond logic.
However, I realised early on that I was drawn to artists’ works that have a strong sense of structure and sequencing. In my own work, I enjoy setting out the rationale for what I am trying to do. I do think deeply on issues and have come to form my own views on the structure, purpose and meaning of art. I have started to write short essays on the subject, notably around aesthetics, the role of the viewer, and the philosophy of language. The essays will be contained in a forthcoming book.
The second was the introduction to systems thinking.
The butterfly effect is well known. That one small event in a remote part of the world can lead to big change in the larger world. The concept describes the interrelationship between all things and events.
At London Business School, I gained an introduction to the academic literature on ‘systems thinking’. One elective that I took in London, ‘System Modelling’, was offered only at LBS and MIT. The course focused on the modelling software “I think”. I learned that the discipline of system theory began with ground-breaking research by the engineer-scientist Jay Forrester, set out in his 1961 publication Industrial Dynamics. Forrester’s research inspired many others, including research into positive and negative reinforcing loops championed by Peter Senge, a McKinsey Fellow, set out in his bestselling 1990 publication The Fifth Discipline.
From that time on, I began to think holistically; I began to understand how we all are part of each other. For me, our encounter today forms part of the vital exchanges between people that are engaging, interactive and ongoing.
The world is fast changing. Old business models will be replaced, or modified. Similarly in the art world, the ‘artist’ business model or value chain has gone through at least several mutations. The one interesting aspect of art and the artist is its revolutionary character – challenging what it is in current practice and making modern, and updating, our sense of the ongoing world – current and future.
The third introduction was to creative thinking – the ability to think outside the box.
I was fortunate to be studying for my MBA at LBS at the time when Professor George Bain was LBS Principal. I found him an inspirational leader. His championing of the ‘3is’ – internationalism, innovation, and integration has remained a bedrock of my philosophy.
Internationalism. London Business School has always been proud of its international student body. The average class of 60 students can be composed of students from over 20 countries; it is a real international ethnicity mix.
Innovation. During my time at LBS, Netscape Navigator was just born. It was the time when that invention enabled the World Wide Web to be browsable and hence usable – albeit the internet connections were still dial up. It was all “Dee-do-Dee-do-Dee” before you got a connection. It was also the time that Al Gore, then America Vice President, was initiating the Information Super Highway. At LBS, we had the good fortune to have a full course on ‘Competing for the Future’ from Professor Gary Hamel, a visionary business guru. Many imaginative ideas, scenario plannings and mappings of the future were fully sketched and drafted in our minds. Those were the days of student dreaming. It all was fascinating.
Integration. At the end of our first-year studies, we all had to take a ‘qualifying’ written examination that brought together or ‘integrated ‘all the subjects we had learned in solving business cases. Many of our classmates were afraid of that as failure would mean your first year of study and investment would go up in smoke. For me, knowledge and practice have always been about ‘integrating’. I suppose in a way who we are today. The importance, however, is how we ‘integrate’ our previous learnings and various experiences in our thoughts, behaviours and decisions.
But while noting the praise for the 3is – internationalism, innovation, and integration, over the past decade or so, I have also noticed the emergence of opposing forces.
I saw in particular over last 10 years how localism was taking preference over internationalism. A ‘local’ coffee roastery is now seen as better than an international chain, and is preferred over it. I also saw a return to traditional ‘craftsmanship’. Instead of pursuing endless and the latest technological innovations, hand-mades are sought out by many, including key influencers. ‘Specialists’ are often now valued more than generalists or integrators.
As I practise my art making, I am alert to those balancing elements.
To me, the visual arts are an international language of its own that goes beyond linguistic boundaries. At the same time, I am alert to the cultural context that I have inherited. Like most artists, I am always seeking innovative ideas or breakthroughs. I lay great emphasis on my predecessors’ traditions and unique cultural conditions. I am eager to blend and create. At the end of day, my overriding belief is that ‘creativity’ remains at the core of all the arts and working out from own’s ‘heart’ is the only unmistakeable approach to communicating with the souls of those who have gone before us.
I would like to say a little more on creative thinking.
I was recently in Hong Kong. On an underground MTR train journey, I spotted that an elaborate 3-side curved bar structure was now in place of the single pole for passengers to use when standing in the middle of the train. Instead of allowing only one or two people to get ‘hold’ of the pole, the bar structure enables more people to be able to steady themselves in a much more comfortable manner. The design is elegant and the execution appealing. It was such an ingenious design!
For the past decade, some of the top international business schools have started to talk about design thinking and incorporate that in their curricula.
So, what is design thinking? Design processes often begin with a full examination of the issues at hand. Once the set of design problems are defined and articulated, real design opportunities emerge. Real creativity starts with identifying the issues. The challenge though is to find the right set of questions and to be able to articulate them.
In the case of the pole at MTR in Hong Kong, the questions were: To begin with, does one see an opportunity or spot an issue first? Then how to define and articulate the issue? And if so, what was the design question – was it to address instability challenges for standing passengers? or… Formulating the right question is half-way to shaping the design and creative process. At the heart of design is the maxim – ‘Identify the problem and the solution will follow’.
Real breakthrough thinking can be hard. The ability to create something that is ground-breaking – or ceiling-breaking – is a rare talent indeed.
Most creative works may not be ground-breaking but incremental in their design or creativity. There is certainly merit in such creativity.
The Japanese practice of ‘Kaizen’ is a good case in point. I will always remember the day at LBS when my class were shown a poster illustrating the evolution of Japanese faucets. The image was of 30 faucets in a 5x6 grid showing how the design had been improved over the years with only marginal changes in functionality year-on-year. We all were amazed at the incremental brilliance of the design evolution!
Whether we take the iPhone, Japanese faucet, or any other invention, they all are examples of creativity at work. These inventions satisfy needs and provide us with benefits that quite often we are unaware. Thus, unrealised demands and opportunities are fulfilled and realised.
Any ground-breaking design or evolutionary design certainly needs imagination – that is what it takes.
I feel blessed to have had a second career in strategy consulting and corporate management. Following those two memorable years of studying in London was my strategy consulting experience at McKinsey.
On appointment, I was assigned to work on a high-profile engagement, helping the Malaysian Government to build its ‘Multi Media Super-Corridor’ (MSC). The project was initiated by Kenichi Ohmae, a former Partner at McKinsey who was an Advisor to the then Prime Minister Dr Mahathir.
After McKinsey, I was headhunted to join MTV in Asia, a Viacom company, one of the four leading global media conglomerates at the time. My time at MTV Asia coincided with the heydays of cable and satellite TV before internet/online took over as the major distribution platform for entertainment. I oversaw a licensing agreement with Japan and joint ventures in Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia. It was a memorable time for me and my team having helped to build MTV from 3 channels in Asia to 20 dedicated 24-hour branded channels in Asia.
The eight years at MTV Networks Asia from 1998-2005 were rewarding. I had a great opportunity to work with many talents from different cultures across Asia. I also got to work closely with our headquarters in London and New York. I still recall the day when the 100th MTV channel was launched in South Africa; the day we broke ground to have our first award show at CCTV China; the day we held our Style Award Show in Shanghai, with SMGTV. Those were days when we broke records and made history of our own.
The post involved travelling over 180 days a year, which was fun, but exhausting as well. At the end of 2005, then 42, I was burnt out. I decided to leave the corporate world.
I had enjoyed the regional and global span of the second phase of my career. I could have continued to follow the management/strategy track, or could I? At the end of the day, I decided that it was time to get back on track in seeking the ‘thing’ – the love and passion that I longed for – before it was too late.
Talk 3
THE FREE SPIRIT
I quit my corporate career age 42. To many, it was a bit too young to ‘retire’. My reply was to say, “I am not retiring retiring. I have merely retired from corporate life”. My last day at MTV Asia was 31 December 2005. On 1 January 2006, I was born again afresh.
I had enjoyed my second career, albeit that it was more focused on management and not quite as ‘free-spirited’ as was my first career where I had been at the forefront of creativity.
As I have recounted, my second career began with a two-year MBA programme at the London Business School, followed by just under two years as a strategy consultant at McKinsey and eight years at MTV Asia as Managing Director, North Asia. At MTV Asia, I also acted as Executive Vice President for the company’s Asia strategic and development function. Considering that those were the golden days of cable and satellite TV, MTV was one of the most creative global television brands. I was fortunate to be working with the best creative minds in the region and around the world.
They were amazing times: truly global and creative, but I came to realise that I wanted more – more for myself as a person and as a creative being.
Coming to that decision and summoning the determination to follow through on it wasn’t easy. There was pressure from my parents and peers not to give up a secure working life at such a young age. With such a big decision, once you have made up your mind, you just have to go with the flow, stick to your larger goal and explore as you navigate the way ahead.
So, as a free soul I went ahead!
Fast forward 18 years from leaving the corporate world.
Considering that my first career in my 20s was just shy of 10 years and my second career after my MBA lasted just short of 10 years, roughly speaking, 10 plus 10 gives a first and second career span of 20 years. My free-spirited phase as an artist is 18 years to date, which is almost the same length of time as my first and second careers combined.
So, what have I done in this third career over the past 18 years?
Apart from my own art making, I have done three other things in my post-corporate life. I think of them as three small unfulfilled dreams that I had long wanted to fulfil. When the opportunities arose, I seized them.
First, I was invited to teach on the University of Hong Kong MBA programme. The opportunity arose following the strategic partnership the University made with London Business School. I taught on the programme for five academic years from 2006 to 2011. At that time, Professor Laura Tyson, an American economist, also a former Economic Advisor to the Clinton Administration, was the LBS Principal. I was invited to join the School’s Regional Advisor Board chaired by Professor Tyson. It was the time when LBS had expanded to form a three way (London-NY-HK) strategic partnership with Columbia University’s Business School and HKU’s Business Faculty. The timing was perfect, given that I was at that time free and independent.
Second, in 2011, I came to know Mr. Bing Thom, an accomplished Canadian architect who was looking to expand in Asia. He had just completed the Arena Centre, a celebrated renovation and extension of theatre space and associated buildings in Washington DC. It was a rare opportunity for me to be able to work personally with such a great architect. I took the opportunity and worked as the Strategic Advisor to the firm for four years.
During that time, the firm won the international competition for the Chinese Opera House – the XiQu Centre – in the West Kowloon Cultural District. I became a director of the joint venture business the firm set up with a Hong Kong company. The firm also built the Chicago Booth, the University of Chicago’s Asia campus, on Victoria Road, Hong Kong. Sadly, Bing Thom passed away in 2016.
Through Bing Thom, I became involved as Lead Manager for the revitalisation of a 1940s building in Hong Kong, the Haw Par Villa, a fascinating architectural conservation project. I had joked to myself that God would not allow me to slip away without completing my architectural studies. Thanks to Bing Thom, I squared the circle!
Third, with another accomplished architect, Ms. Yimei Chan, I co-founded a not-for-profit organisation that focused on creativity-nurturing and learning for children aged 4-6 in Hong Kong. This we achieved with a generous donation from Ms. Sally Aw, the daughter of the late Aw Boon Har, whom I get to know through Bing Thom and the Haw Par project. I am proud that, over three years, we championed more than 200 programs and worked with over ten local communities.
As I said earlier, having quit my corporate career, my aim was to be a ‘free soul’… to be a free spirit, a dreamer, and an adventurer.
I had decided to fight for what I aspire to – for what I love, for what defines me. I told myself that I would no longer be inhibited by traditional society values, structures or norms.
In saying that, I did not mean that I would disregard the opinion of people whom I love or shy away from my responsibilities or aspire to any sort of foolish freedom. I decided that I would simply go with the flow, embrace spontaneity, reject conformity and live my life bravely.
Back to my own art-making. Indeed, my ‘third’ career came into ‘public’ being 10 years ago when, at the age of 50, I had my first solo art exhibition, Mountain Vastness: Black Series (2013), at the Hong Kong Fringe Gallery.
The following year, I was invited by a curator and with the support of the Swire Group to have my second solo show at the Opposite House in Beijing, a 6,000 sqft (600sqm) atrium where I exhibited Mountain Vastness: White Series (2014). I mounted the exhibition in creative partnership with my wife Rainbow. Together we created a mega installation 4.5m tall, 9m long and 5m wide. We were overwhelmed by the response. Since then, I haven’t stopped producing.
We all know that the harvest is only a result of seeding, planting and cultivating. You harvest what you sow. It is said that measurement of success, if it comes, is not of the harvest itself but of the seeds planted and effort to cultivate them.
More than 30 years ago I took the oath of love in Ottawa by marrying my wife, Rainbow.
“If there was only one thing I would do it right, I want this to be loving you.”
Through marriage to Rainbow, I have found that love is enduring, patient and kind. When you find love, you no longer insist on going your own way. Love is not irritable or resentful; it rejoices not at wrongdoing but in the truth.
While hard work and persistence are key, I have come to learn that we must – if we can – love what we do.
At our last anniversary, Rainbow and I exchanged accounts of our life together, saying, “Who knew that life would take us to so many interesting places where we have lived and worked together: Hong Kong, Montreal, London, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Kelowna, and now Vancouver in Canada.” The list of places includes an unforgettable one-month work trip to São Paulo and countless business and holiday trips we have made to cities in Asia, Europe, America, and Africa, too! My wife’s recent work, as an International Film Festival Executive, has taken her even further to Tallinn, Sitges, Venice, Athens, Helsinki and Nepal. She goes virtually anywhere where there’s an international film festival…
We still have dreams; our hearts are forever young.
Today, here we are in Tokyo, with my exhibition, When did you last kiss the clouds?. I have just turned 60.
I wish all of us gathered here today the physique and strength to permit our bodies to follow our hearts. I hope that also for myself, as I venture into another 30 years, by which time, I will be 90.
In all that lies ahead, I will remain focused on and committed to my work.
