Jimmy

Jimmy , B.A. in Fine Arts, with a major in Design. Since 1998, Jimmy published several illustrated books with amazing originality and multi-faceted narratives. He had set a fashion in creating and publishing illustrated books in Taiwan and then international markets. Utilizing images as a refreshing form of literary language, Jimmy creates in his works poetic frames that emit charms and appeals.

So far, his books are translated into English, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean and so forth. Being the most popular illustrator author in Asia, creating lots of fantasy and touch hearts cross all generation. Immersing in his works is just like to go into Jimmy's inner world, his inviting stories reflect our real life, more and more people are intoxicated by his vivid strokes and his magic realism narratives. Now in Asia, "Jimmy" is like a pop of a new life style.

From www: Metapedia

Below are the books I've read and like written and illustrated by Jimmy.

Making picture books for adults

Jimmy Liao's illustrated books about people coping in the modern urban world have been a big hit with office workers, housewives and other adults.

The picture books are popular because they touch on common feelings of being alienated, stressed out by work or fears about losing jobs and loved ones, readers say. Most of the pages in the paperback books -- usually the size of a cocktail napkin -- have one line of text and a clever, cute or whimsical cartoon-like drawing that advances the plot.

From www: Taipei Times

Unlike modernism trying to present the truth of world, postmodernism aims to create new world by languages. Jimmy attempts to replace the sole meaning of fixed language; instead, his use of illustrations can boost imagination. His whimsical and poetic moments gave birth to beautiful ideas, which are transmitted by pictures. There would be various interpretations and understandings of the same picture book and they all depend on reader’s personal experience. In a postmodernism age, picture plays an important part of communication, and it is able to leave a blank space for free imagination. That is a crucial feature that pictures books of Jimmy can translate into several languages and touch people of distinct cultures.

From Jimmys own articles, I found that he's not good at remembering numbers or dates, however, he's quite good at remembering scenes and pictorial information. Many of his pictures in his novels came from his dream or a short period time of pictorial memory. Also, he felt forced to draw when he first started his career, all his characters were tools for him to make a living, he didn't have any sentiment on them. Until he got very sick, he had to fight against destiny, he started to miss his characters, and started to put his real emotions inside them, and this gradually made him become a master and get successful afterwards.