Jia Cheng Wu’s art exhibit opens at Image Factory

Opening tonight at the Image Factory is an art exhibition by twenty-three year old Jia Cheng Wu, an employee of Belize Bank. Wu, originally from China, grew up and studied in Belize. In 2006 he became the first Belizean to win the regional Caribbean Secondary Examination Council’s award for art. While the budding artist has been sketching from an early age, he developed a passion for perfecting fantasy drawings and Japanese anime. The artwork includes color graphics and detailed shading in pencil on paper. The collection with all its intricate designs took Wu several years to put together.

Jia Cheng Wu, Artist
“Most of my works are fantasy artwork—those are the things that interest me. I’m looking forward to becoming a game designer one of these days or maybe a website designer. Most of my works are in black and white—I just love to draw in black and white. There are a few that you will see in color, but that is just because I’m fairly new to coloring. I started drawing ever since I was seven. Most of my drawings—some of them took hours, some of them took maybe ten hours or twenty, or sometimes even one hundred hours.”

Duane Moody
“Which would you say is your favorite and why?”

Jia Cheng Wu
“It would be that one over there—the one with three dragons in it. I like that one because I wanted to depict something that is cool and has this arrogant mood in it. I spent a lot of time doing that one; almost a hundred hours. When I was a child, you’re exposed to cartoons and later on in life, you find video games that have dragons in them—I’m just surrounded by them, that’s why I got into it. I want people to look at it and not only glimpse but look at every single detail and find something in it that is interesting to them. Sometimes I hide something in my drawing that comes like a surprise to them. Sometimes you get ideas from games, sometimes you get inspiration from music that you listen to and sometimes it’s from friends, but I think there is a point where you don’t look for inspiration no more but you want to become the person to inspire.”

The exhibit will be open until November twenty-third.