Meet Tianshu Wu | Illustrator

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

Hi Tianshu, why did you pursue a creative career?
I enjoy imagining and telling stories. When I was so little that I couldn’t read, I made up stories from illustrations in picture book and shared with my parents. I would require them to listen and if I sensed that they were not paying attention, I asked: “ Are you listening?” Then they would say yes (may be just pretending). Later at school, I filled my textbooks with clumsy doodles which were usually weird abstract characters. I find that I am very sensitive to color. A beautiful palette can easily cheer me up. After entering the illustration program in SVA, I realized that making images was not just imitating a scene, but more about self-expression. I feel comfortable when I can tell a story through color and shapes, arousing emotions and containing memories and creating real dreams. I learn more than just illustrations in becoming an illustrator. I become more open-minded and more curious about everything than before. If the world is a locked treasure box, then illustration is my key to explore it.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
One of my motto in art making is “function brings beauty.” Though it’s a design principle in industrial design ( I can’t remember who said this), I think it can also applies to the illustration world. I design my image to serve my concept. Images must convey information, and to make the idea work, the design, the shape, the color in the images have to be arranged in a certain logic. When the logic of the image fits in the logic of the concept, beauty reveals itself. Therefore, I emphasize on symbols, color and shape a lot. Recently I start to do hand lettering and get inspirations from traditional graphic design a lot because there’s a lot overlapping in design and my practice. I’ve got freelanced jobs in design so I am an illustrator who knows how to design. Right now because I have one year to graduate from my MFA program in MICA, so I’m preparing for my thesis. The project is going to be a small dictionary of surreal family life. It explores the husband-wife relationship and parent-children relationship. I did small projects based on family topic before, but I was never satisfied with. So hopefully I can make it this time.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Reading other artist’s life stories, either self-written or written by others, is always inspiring to me. I read about Beethoven and Van Gogh at a pretty young age, and the contrast between the creativity they’ve shown and the torture they experienced impress me till today. I think the impression I got then was “artists are miserable.” So I didn’t decide to be an artist in the beginning. I change my impression recently because I think there are artists who are relatively less miserable. Like English writer Maugham, he is recognized as one of the most popular (and probably the wealthiest) writer of his era, and his life is so interesting to look like though I’m pretty sure he suffered a lot in his childhood. Some artists draw energy from pain, some from pleasure. In either way, they show courage and passion in pursuing art. Seeing other people being courageous and passionate is the most effective way to motivate me in making art, because I want to be just like them.

Instagram: @eccentric_distance