Meet Changyu Zou | illustrator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Changyu Zou and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Most of my creative inspiration comes from poetry and I like to convert my feelings about words into images. Although these words are sometimes very abstract and difficult to understand, they can give me unlimited imagination. I believe that visual language and text have been influencing and blending with each other, so I try to use visual art to express and describe words.

I really like Tagore’s collection of Starry Birds. Starry Birds. consists of 325 small, clear, untitled poems on extremely common things, such as grass, falling leaves, birds, stars, rivers, and so on. The poems pay great attention to the description of nature; a bird, a flower, a star, and a raindrop, all have humanity and vitality as well. He believes that there is an intrinsic connection between human emotions and natural forces. For example, he gives “the meaning of morning”. The arrival of the morning is not a trivial event repeated in an endless monotony, but an eternal miracle. Reading his poems, one feels that the activities of the universe and the changes in life are meaningful and joyful, and it gives one endless courage.

Starry Birds is a series of illustrations I created based on Tagore’s poems. I use gouache, acrylics, crayons, colored pencils, and collages to draw the illustrations.

‘In the darkness, the man on the left lights up a star and the planet as a human face with visual elements such as flying birds, stars, spaceships, etc. surrounding its planetary rings.’

I love the relationship between man and nature as depicted in Tagore’s poetry, which is highly harmonious and together forms a magnificent picture of the universe.

I chose elements for these to represent humans such as cars and houses, and also elements that symbolize nature, such as birds. They are together on a planetary ring, expressing a state of harmony and love.

The illustrations in this series influenced my subsequent work. I began to use flying birds, planets, stars, and other elements in many places, and I think these images can represent many things. I hope they can bring the audience a beautiful and romantic emotion.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I think I would take my friend to the beach to watch the sunrise or sunset because my friend and I love to take pictures so I hope we can capture a lot of beautiful moments. The beach is a place where my friends and I often go, just walking and talking on the beach or enjoying the sea breeze can relax to reduce a little stress.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I think it was my family that gave me a great start to my story. My family loved to buy me books from a young age, I have found that words are powerful, and I enjoy the endless thinking and imagination that words bring me. I especially like poetry, which uses the most beautiful words to express what’s most real in the poet’s heart.

Website: https://changyuzou.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/changyu_zou/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCroBtWhfw5ywPjxxO3eXZxw