ART, LIKE ALL businesses, is brand and image obsessed. It's especially true in this part of the world, where the lure of the booming contemporary Chinese art market has sent everyone - dealers, critics, consultants and curators - looking for the next star. And if an impoverished artist finds fame and fortune with one image, that's what he's going to be encouraged to stick to.
These market conditions mean that any artist who dares to diversify is seen as a marketing no-no. But Norm Yip - who does big, colourful abstract paintings, meticulous pencil illustrations, blurry art photography, homo-erotic portraiture, celebrity portraits of the likes of Ricky Martin and innumerable other things - is past all those labels.
When the Canada native first moved to Hong Kong in 1994, he had it all: a well-paid architecture job and the posh lifestyle that went with it. But he gave it all up five years later to develop a bewildering mix of art styles. Today, he works and lives on the top floor of an old laundry-covered Sheung Wan building that smells of incense and Chinese medicine. He has one assistant, a giant 14-year-old Maine Coon cat, and a collection of paintings, illustrations and photos so varied they look as if they could be from three or four different artists.
'I was working for an international architecture firm, and it was constant drama,' Yip says of his old life. 'I was working all the time, but I couldn't let go. I fell into the trappings of that lifestyle. Hong Kong is very image and prestige conscious. I was so lost that I went for a tarot card reading at the New Age Shop and the fortune teller said, 'You have to stop whatever you are doing right now.' So I stopped: the partying, the spending, the insane work hours. When you're inside that bubble, you don't know what it looks like outside. Once you break out, you realise it all doesn't matter that much.'
In 1999, Yip, Betty Cheung and Wilson Chik opened alternative art space Meli-Melo. 'That was a good catalyst for me artistically,' says Yip. 'It gave me the freedom to experiment in any way I wanted, either through photography, painting or drawing.'
Yip calls 1999 his year of transition. It was when he began to produce art. 'I remember starting with plain paper and plain pencils: the cheapest, easiest medium. First, I drew a circle. Then another circle. Then a square. Then a cross. Then another square. I was starting from the very beginning again and was very happy. I didn't have to care about what other people thought.'