Being born, raised and living in Canada my entire life, I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Being a first generation Canadian, my parents first immigrated to Canada in the early 70’s from Hong Kong to start a new life. Like many immigrants, my parents worked hard to bring up both my brother and I in Toronto’s downtown east side in Riverdale. My grandfather, who stayed in Hong Kong, named me åŠ ç”Ÿ which literally means born in Canada because he was so proud to have had his first grandson born in Canada. My name Carson, although sounding very English, was actually a happy coincidence since it was just a phonetic translation from my Chinese name, pronounced as Gasun, similar to the sound of my name Carson.
In 1999, I graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) with a Bachelors of Design degree. After spending over 8 years as an advertising art director selling cars, hamburgers, TVs and more cars (I’m sorry), I moved out west for a change of pace and to explore more of Canada. I quickly fell in love with Vancouver (who wouldn’t?) and completely enamoured with all the beauty that B.C. has to offer with it’s majestic mountains and oceans despite getting obliterated by my allergies once every year (damn you trees and pollen!), and the relentless rain which I oddly grew to love. After 13 years in the advertising world, I secretly went back to my roots as an illustrator and visual artist and started an experimental creative studio called Chairman Ting Industries with my wife Denise where we were able to focus on passion projects that just made us happy. This little side project of ours has now turned into our full time jobs through producing work for global brands such as Microsoft, adidas Originals, The Cartoon Network, The Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010 and of course the Canadian Tourism Commission and more.
If both my Father and Grandfather were alive today, I’m sure they would be extremely proud to know that a member of the Ting family has been invited to paint a giant Canadian maple leaf (27ft x 16ft to be exact) on the side of the Canada Place building on Canada Day (Wow, that’s a lot of Canada). I am extremely honoured and proud to be invited to participate in this project by the Canadian Tourism Commission. I hope to see all of you on Canada Day to share our love for this great country we call home.
We’ll be painting live on July 1st at the Canada Place on the promenade in Vancouver from 10am – 6pm. If you’re not in town, you can follow all our updates via Twitter and Instagram or through Explore Canada’s Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/ExploreCanada
We’re also proud to have commissioned our good friends from Osler Zoo Photography to help document our entire mural project.