Calvin Lai

Calvin Lai’s art has evolved a lot over the years. His painting process has matured into a mixture of seeing, distorting, and reinterpreting with the threads of realism weaving the backdrop of where his artistic style is today. As a child, drawing was something Calvin loved, and to make a picture appear lifelike became his goal. Through constantly working, Calvin’s art began to breathe, and his fascination with value and perspective blossomed. Eventually, he moved from where he grew up in Los Angeles to San Francisco. There he studied drawing and printmaking at San Francisco State University. In 2008, he enrolled in the Academy of Art for illustration, but began painting instead. He found that he preferred the fine arts over commercial illustration, and now works as a full time oil painter.

Since then he has continued to develop and refine his oil painting skills. Lai’s work has been shown nationally in galleries, group exhibitions and juried shows. He has executed a large number of commissioned portraits over the past several years, and his paintings have appeared in national and international publications. His recent work has returned to a serious study of portraits and the figure, which has always been the anchor for his creative drive. His goal has gone beyond mere technical interpretation to a deeper sense of what the energy of the person feels like. But the borders for what he chooses to paint ecompasses a variety of subjects, including landscapes, cityscapes, and still lifes, and ultimately he is driven to capture everything around him through his paints, brushes, and determination.