"Celestial Rhapsody" Painting

"It's not the portrayal of reality but how light travels across it that interests me."
- Richard Chiang

Born in 1983, Chiang was originally from Taiwan. He moved to the United States in 2001 and spent the next seven years honing his skills in fashion design which bore fruit when he won the Nolcha International Fashion Design Competition during the New York Fashion Week in September 2007. In the following year, he moved to Chicago to broaden his artistic skillset by earning the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Master of Science degree in Digital Cinema with Animation focus from DePaul University. Since 2009, he has been working as a multimedia designer for clients in marketing, business consulting, healthcare, and higher education. His projects include graphic design, illustrations, web design, print and digital marketing collateral, video editing, motion graphics, and animation.

​Chiang was introduced to the oil medium at the age of thirteen. He was immediately taken by its versatility and slow-drying attributes. It was a time before the digital mediums became highly developed and widely accessible. The freedom of adding layers and blending colors opened up unprecedented possibilities for him. His fascination for the oil medium has been consistent even after the arrival of the digital age of art creation. To him, oil's organic brushstrokes are irreplaceable no matter how close the digital tools could deliver.

​Painting helps Chiang maintain his inner piece, meditate on life, and seek wonders in the mundane. He believes, “Beauty is everywhere, it only takes the eyes to see, the mind to perceive, and the heart to appreciate.”