SYNCRETISM is the term I use to describe my stylistic tendency of combining opposing principles in a single artwork. I developed my theories around the eastern “yin-yang” idea of finding “wholeness” through the acceptance of the dualities in all experience. My attempt to resolve the contradictions inherent in the exchange of influences between east and west and the impact of the information age upon cultures, as well as the need to find the visual equivalents to contemporary thought and experience, led to this synthesis.

SYNCRETIC ABSTRACTIONS: I was initially concerned with uniting the dichotomies in abstract art practice. The geometric and expressionistic polarities, representing reason and intuition symbolically, were reconciled in my work by means of a geometric divisionism that brimmed with impassioned markings, colors and textures, but raised some eyebrows in the art establishment. Many artists however, later adopted this approach. Eventually, the fusion of eastern and western soul and language developed as the thematic focus of my syncretic abstractions.

Taken a step further, syncretic abstractionism led to SYNCRETISM, a broad gesture of crossing over the borderline to the other side. Abstract art, hitherto understood
as the twentieth century art form that has turned away from the idea of art as a mimicry of nature, is here, seemingly desecrated by figure painting. Figures culled from magazines or snap shots, or totally invented, (oftentimes rendered with photographic accuracy to emphasize its separateness), are arbitrarily superimposed over the abstract paintings like the handiwork of fastidious iconoclasts or graffiti vandals. I have breached the wall that separates mutually exclusive domains.

>> Cont'd.