James W. Chiang

In addition to his painting career, James W. Chiang has led a prolific career as an animator and animation director since 1999. He is a graduate of Sheridan College and was recruited and trained by Walt Disney Feature Animation in Los Angeles. Chiang subsequently worked for Lucas Arts, Blue Sky Studios and Sony Pictures as well as international independent studios. As an animator, he has exhibited artworks in Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco and has lectured at various production houses and academic institutions around the world. While living in Singapore, Chiang was struck with the desire to return to his first love, painting. Chiang in 2016 moved to the serene atmosphere of Vancouver Island with a great focus on mastering his technique and voice on canvas. His new paintings, emphasizing chromatic purity and precision, seek to encourage a moving, multi-dimensional experience through the medium of acrylic on canvas. In his own words, Chiang sees painting as “kinetic exchange – a culmination of energy, experience and existence where encounters with it are experiential rather than intellectual.” His geometrical works play with light and space to extend the dialogue between human expression and mathematical order, creating a space for spiritual consummation that can have no true justification or explanation. Art is, as he says, “an existential union of everything all at once”. Chiang, both accomplished in animation and painting, showed his hard-edged paintings for the first time in Paul Kyle Gallery’s Summer 2025 group show, and continues to provide consultations to art professionals from his studio on Vancouver Island.