The Multicultural hybrid images which I have done above are mostly brush drawings executed on watercolour paper. I have used rice paper in the past but found it wasn’t bright enough as a white background for my type of artistic experimentation. There is also collage like use made of Chinese festive objects such as joss paper and ghost money, etc. Within the poetics of the art work I try to create a dynamic balance between the dialectics of the visual metonymy (the still object that can also represent something else) of this collage. The metaphorical inclinations of the visual movement within the brush drawing (the ghe energy) create a double visual conceit to interesting and fresh effect, which can be used in playful, lyrical or serious ways. This then acts as a an invisible type of aesthetic net attempting to catch an important cross cultural presence.

This double visual conceit can be observed above in Fig 9; ‘Mother and Child in Shower’. In this, the two rival centres both oppose and harmonise with each other in the embrace of the mother and of her child contrasted with the bathrobe. They are like magnetic energies. These poetic devices are used to demystify a slice of life that is about nakedness and the covering and hiding of fecund nudity.

This kind of creativity can also function as a joke (always a bit dangerous in multicultural situations) as we see below in Fig 10; ‘Make Something Out of Nothing.’ that is also written in mandarin and refers realistically to its own creative illusion.

But creativity isn’t this rational as it occurs in praxis; much is intuitive and grows out of a sequence of guesses within the magical counter world of the art work. In creative situ and in process of innovation with the art work, it’s like trying to find a path through an over grown rain forest. Only later through critical hindsight and reflection and changes to the art work do we see the pattern of our journey through each obstacle. During the creative process the art work will start to kind of talk to you and make suggestions on how it might be completed. It's part of your own internal dialogue. Like planning to write a love letter or poem in your mind before you do it. If the art work is successful, it will name an important presence and if strikes something essential it will strive for universality. If this occurs, (which is rare and is really only glimpsed by the creative psyche in art works) then the art imagery will seek to speak to everyone for as long as possible until it exhausts its address. Artistic universality also has its own inconstant history and must be renewed or changed with every generation.

One of the difficulties and yet great joys of artistic creativity is to be involved passionately in these types of quests. It’s the closest we can move to the processes of knowing and feeling the energies of being and becoming within life itself. Art and culture can be used to affirm or challenge ‘reality’ in the name of smaller or larger presences.

In the following works I’ve attempted to use Chinese philosophical history as a subject of humorous cross cultural images. There has also been many years of research behind this involvement and there is a pronounced feeling that our society has lost interest in the big philosophical questions, especially of the artist coming in from a humorous angle.