Endy Chow interview: the Hong Kong singer and actor Endy Chow (周國賢) said he fears picking up a paintbrush again because he might forget how to write songs.
This was my second conversation with Endy, and compared with the first time his hair is longer, his frame a little leaner, yet his greeting carries the same sincere, slightly reserved smile.
I first knew of Chow from songs such as “14 Days,” “Meguro,” and “Underground Street,” and from albums including “Entanglement,” “One More Minute in This World,” and “Reykjavik.” In recent years his film work has shown the same discipline, and near age 40 he pushed his physical limits in the film “一秒拳王,” a role that earned him the Hong Kong Film Directors’ Guild Best Actor award.
“Art is a language easier than words,” he told me.
Chow has worked professionally for 18 years, and his relationship with music reads like the arc of a life: moments of sudden joy and long stretches of struggle. Those experiences feed his songwriting and, he says, urge him to capture life’s beauty quickly with a guitar and a melody.
Endy Chow interview: “I truly believe I will paint again.”
Chow moved with his family to New Zealand in 1993 at age 13. A year later he met a classmate who played guitar, and the band Zarahn formed. Even when Chow went to study in Japan in 1998 he completed material for the group and left an album before he left.
He told me music came later, and that as a child he was first and foremost a drawer. “I picked up music much later. When I was young I drew first,” he said, recalling how art class and music lessons were the only times he felt natural and unguarded.
His mother remembers giving him paper and a pencil at family dim sum, and he would draw for hours without leaving his seat. Chow calls that early habit a kind of addiction, and he says moving to New Zealand pushed him toward music, which became another form of devotion.
Chow blends visual and musical imagination when he composes. “I tend to start with an image, a scene, or a color, and the melody comes from that,” he said. When he paints, he prefers quiet, natural sounds such as waterfalls or chanting monks to accompany him.
Are painting and music the same influence, or do they steer him in different directions? “They are tightly linked,” he answered. “They both inform each other in how I approach a piece.”
Stage, studio and solitude: why he needs both
Chow says he only recently began to feel a kind of surrender onstage. Early in his career he worried about how others saw him, and it took years to shed that anxiety. “On stage, music lets me show a restless, angry side,” he said.
When he draws, Chow said, he never notices other people. Portraits and pencil work remain his first love, though he later learned acrylics and oil and developed mixed-media techniques for album art, inserts, and packaging.
He described a creative rule that has shifted as he has aged: rather than adding more elements to a song, he now learns to remove them. “Less is more,” he said. “As you get older, you learn to take things away.”
For Chow, painting often unlocks songwriting. When he cannot write a song, returning to drawing will open the idea again. He has quietly been saving works for a future solo exhibition, and he told me he believes the time to show will come soon.
Endy Chow interview: “I am afraid I will forget songwriting if I paint too much”
Chow described his creative life as both exhilarating and inward. “I am often tense,” he said. “Through art I try to peel back layers, like an onion, to find my truest self.”
When I asked whether painting is a want or a need, he answered without pause: “Need.” He confessed the fear that if he returns to painting fully he may lose momentum in music and forget how to write songs, which explains why he has hesitated for so long.
Chow has also expanded into film. He said scheduling film shoots while maintaining music and visual work is a result of ambition and time limits. “I am not in my early 20s anymore,” he said, “so I want to use my remaining time precisely.”
He sees creative projects as pieces of a puzzle that together reveal more of who he is. “Each film, each song and each painting is a missing piece,” he said. “I am still assembling the picture.”
Christie’s autumn auction and a close look at masters
To mark Christie’s Hong Kong autumn auction, ZTYLEZ and Christie’s arranged a private viewing of four highlights, giving Chow a rare opportunity to study original works up close. The lots included George Condo’s Rodrigo and His Muse, the oil painting Yo Ryu Kun by the Japanese artist Shiraga Kazuo, Georges Mathieu’s Silence Apaisé, and a joint work titled White Light; & White Night by Yoshitomo Nara and another contemporary artist.
Chow was especially struck by Shiraga Kazuo’s use of feet to smear paint, a technique that reminded him of a rebellious acrylic class in New Zealand where he painted with his hands. The teacher had told the class to use brushes, yet a short reprimand became the moment that convinced him to pursue art as a profession.
Chow cited a surprising list of influences, from director Hayao Miyazaki to Egon Schiele and Yoshitaka Amano, the latter informing his early love of Final Fantasy imagery and watercolor worlds.
Christie’s Hong Kong is presenting its annual autumn auction at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (a waterfront convention center) from Nov. 26 to Dec. 2, with a public preview that is free to enter, the auction house said. The sale will feature nearly 300 works from the 20th and 21st centuries alongside design and luxury objects.
Chow said he plans to keep working across music, film and visual art, and that the search for a complete self has no endpoint. “There is no beginning and no end,” he said. “I enjoy the process, painting and writing every day.”
If you want to view the auction preview in person, it runs Nov. 26 to Dec. 2 in Hall 3D at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. The preview is free and open to the public, Christie’s said, and includes works from a range of modern and contemporary artists.
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Executive Producer: Angus Mok
Producer: Vicky Wai
Photography: Olivia Tsang
Videography: Andy Lee, Man Tam
Styling: Vicky Wai
Makeup: Winkli @ Vinciwinki.com
Hair: Eve Chiu @ W.Workshop
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Editor: Carson Lin
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Artworks: CHRISTIE’S HONG KONG LIMITED
