Linking all my works (installations, performances, paintings, workshops) is an interest in connecting and communicating.
I combine disparate elements seeking synaptic connections and personal engagement.
A traveller and story-teller with ancestral roots in all continents, I’ve circumnavigated the globe three times. A global citizen, I draw from world religions, philosophy and mythology: exploring images resonating across world cultures. My grandfather, composer/author Cyril Scott, advocated “unity in diversity” a concept core to my own philosophy.
I probe the links between language, thought and perception, exploring univsersal symbols, variable interpretations, choice and possibilities.
I'm particularly interestd in how a work makes you feel and where that feeling takes you.
My work fosters personal expression, dialogue and exchange between viewers, participants and audiences; and exposes the public to creative process.
Visitor engagement is a key element in my work. Through encaustic paintings, interactive sculpture installations and performance I probe beneath the surface, into core emotional, spiritual and psychological human impulses.
With found resources I create symbolic works that speak directly to the deeper aspects of the human psyche. Such resources may be objects, images, sounds, people, words, ideas and/or actions. I create powerful, evocative, often ambiguous works that find meaning depending on the perspective, emotional state and personal interpretation of the viewer.
I present situations which touch and provoke people. The work stimulates people to connect, identify with and feel more compassionately for others.
I aim to trigger the unconscious mind and spark a numinous experience: an ‘a-hah!’ moment or a deep reflective state in which new insights can emerge, catapulting the viewer into a new level of awareness or understanding. To quote Bob Marley: “Who feels it knows it.”
In Tokyo, 1996, reacting against the discipline-based isolation of the arts in western cultures, and in conversation with Peter Oldham (then Political Consul, Canadian Embassy in Tokyo), I coined the term “Syncretic Art”.
”Syncretism” is the fusion of disparate elements.
“Syncretic Art” is the combination of some or any of: visual arts: sculpture, painting, multi-media, sound sculpture, surround-sound audio, video; music: voice, piano and percussion; performance: theatre and movement; mythology; environment and contemporary archaeology. As such, the term “Syncretic Art”, albeit unfamiliar, most effectively summarizes all elements of my work.
Through Syncretic Art, the fusion of disparate elements, I aim to fuel the vital spark that connects people in a transcendent artistic experience. Historically, Action paintings brought gesture and process into art; Installation/ environmental art embraces the viewer’s entire sensory experience; Syncretic Art fuses all disciplines to bring about a numinous holistic art experience.
Grounded in the encounter and in the role it plays as a civilizing force within society, Syncretic Art is a vehicle through which individuals may develop a deeper consciousness of themselves and the world in which they live.
When I can awaken possibility in other people, when my works generate shining eyes, I know I’m on the right track. |
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