Lillian Liu

Lillian Liu was born on July 14, 1992 in Vancouver, British Columbia. She has spent part of her youth in London, United Kingdom. She completed her graduation in piano performance from the University of British Columbia and also studied at the Vancouver Academy of Music. She then enrolled at the Royal College of Music in the U.K. to earn her Master's degree in classical piano performance. She also earned an ARCT diploma for performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music.

Throughout much of her childhood, Lillian Liu was preoccupied with developing her musical skills and used to spend hours every day to learn to play the piano and the violin. She always had a fascination with painting, but never got the opportunity to learn the required skills as a child. However, while she was in high school, she was encouraged by a teacher to take up photography. She decided to give it a chance as an off-the-path experiment, and enrolled into a photography course at school to get access to a camera.

She was soon pleasantly surprised to realize that photography allowed her to freely express her feelings through visual arts in a more accessible manner than painting could. Unwilling to waste her time on "excessively boring and bland" manuals, she took a hands-on approach and began taking pictures of almost everything around her. While it has been a slow process for her to master the type of art she is known for now, she has already worked on independent projects in over 17 global cities with talented people from North America and Europe.

Juggling music and photography at the same time has not been easy for Lillian Liu as she had to struggle with financial issues. She worked with a basic camera for years as all her funding went to her studies. Thanks to her talent in music, she was able to perform at various events, find jobs as a musical teacher, and later collaborate with modern composers who utilize unconventional techniques. Her background in music also helped develop her photography skills indirectly as she was accustomed to conveying message to the listener only through sound, which she strived to achieve in the fields of visual arts as well by trying to depict emotions in a likewise manner. Her art is heavily influenced by her childhood fascination with "epic tales, folk legends, movies, and roleplaying games." As a result, her pictorial depictions also very often contain a great amount of escapism and empowerment. To achieve this, she is known to use retouching techniques extensively, which at times has subjected her to criticism from purists who prefer not to consider her artworks photography due to photo manipulation. However, that doesn't dampen her spirits at all as she is focused on achieving her goals than follow strict procedures. Because she learnt her art through trial and error, she still enjoys fiddling with new things to learn more about them.

Apart from her musical performances and art galleries, she has indexed and worked on the RCM Museum of Music's database of historical items, handling instruments from the fifteenth century. Since November 2015, she is part of CW+'s 'Memory Lane' project in London, United Kingdom as a pianist. The initiative reaches over 5000 patients per year, reinforcing the importance of art in cognitive healing.