I endeavor to present a unique and innovative style of Chinese painting, in combining ideas of calligraphy and painting, in integrating Science and Art, and in blending the East and the West. Using a traditional painting medium, but with self-invented modern technique of pigmentizing-and-alumizing, a binary balance between traditional art practice and contemporary art process is achieved. Another trademark of my paintings is the controlled and yet harmonious splashings of varied Chinese ink and colors, and a rich mix of dry-wet, dispersed-concentrated, bright-dark and light-heavy effects. Heavy color is created from a mixture of color pigments from mineral and vegetable sources. The surface of my paintings is usually converted into a virtual platform, sometimes unpredictable, on which diverse entities converge, and then diverge to make a picture. I continue to pursue a state between figurative naturalism and abstract intellectualism, between likeness and unlikeness seeking the Yin Yang harmony of form and spirit, past and present.

Leon K. L. Chew...