Spime Liu is a first generation Canadian from a traditional Hong Kong family. As a young girl, she frequently moved between 3 countries on 2 continents, attending 9 different schools, she struggled to find her place and felt isolated from her peers. This sense of loneliness and alienation deeply shaped her early experiences and worldview. Spime recalled, “After I moved, I started making jewelry and clothes out of objects I collected from every place I lived in—keychains, ribbons, wires and Chinese silk coin pouches. I would wear them to cope with feelings of leaving home. Making these things made me feel more comfortable.”

By drawing upon her personal history of early loneliness and the realities of a changing environment, she paints to capture the grief and the quiet strength that can emerge from such experiences. Spime creates paintings that speak to the challenges of a growing social epidemic of loneliness in 21st-century urban life.

Spime Liu was born in Montreal, QC. She is currently based in New York City. Since 2021, Liu has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Hong Kong, South Korea, United States, and Canada. Liu’s work can be found in a private collection at the Gladstone House. She graduated from OCAD University, Toronto in 2014. In 2020, she was awarded Artscape Daniel Launchpad’s bursary for Visual Arts, Canada’s first creative entrepreneurship hub designed to help emerging and established artists, designers and creators.