As part of the movement in art to return to one's roots in the 1980s, Oriental artists in the United States have sought to unite the dynamic development in Western art with the Eastern tradition. This became possible because modern art itself moved in the direction of the shallow depth of Oriental art, beginning as early as a century ago with the work of Van Gogh and Gauguin. Eastern artists have made this approach of the two traditions in their art in many different ways, from technical to the most spiritual.

Chinyee is an artist who applies the modern techniques of Abstract and Lyric Expressionism in her work which, nevertheless, originates in a vision strongly influenced by the Chinese way of seeing. Her first love is nature, which echoes in her color, her line, and her spatial composition. The first impression one has in viewing her art, which is to be exhibited at Gelabert Studios, 256 West 86th Street (at Broadway) is of finding a glow over everything. Light spreads about and through in a transparency resulting from her feathery going over much of the surface with repeating narrow brush strokes. In some works, there are many repetitions in almost straight lines. In others, the lines turn in a rhythmic sweep. "The World Cried over the Tiananmen Square Massacre" has very expressive black lines that swoop down from black clouds overhead as in a maelstrom. They attack the earth below. "Reunion in Blue II", reproduced in color, in this issue, has shorter red strokes over white and vice versa, while longer sweeping blue lines over the colors on the left create a strong contrast. This is nature, a dynamic nature of winds and rain.

In "Rose and Green", green strokes partly cover pink and rose areas in an incomplete pattern, loose enough to seem to straggle like reeds. Within this grid of bright colors, the sunlight dances in the weeds. In "The Blue Rhapsody I" the bulky darker space dominates canvas just as a high mountain would in a Chinese landscape. On the other hand, a new painting dominated by purple is very uniform in a pattern of continued vertical strokes, the colors changing as they do in a sunswept Nebraska wheat field under various strata of clouds.

The blue that represents sky and sea is a favorite color of Chinyee. In painting "8948", the form is fairly regular and employs light blue and an off white, along with an area of aquamarine and spots of other colors. The scene appears to be a high sky, spread over an edge of land and reflected water.

Chinyee's ventures in abstraction appear to include many of the moods of Nature, melding human emotions and the awareness of eternity. This is notably true of her very large diptych, which again is dominated by blue and has both regular and sweeping loose lines. This work is like a symphony that includes two approaches to calligraphy, as well as a basic primitive abstract form beneath it all.

What Chinyee's art is all about is a celebration of life, a true lyric utterance. She illustrates the glow of the sun because it is the glow of life itself. Because nature is simplified into song, we find the basic nature of her forms. "8951" is virtually long lines in opposition to short lines, heavy dark foreground creating a perspective to the milder hues farther off, as one seems to penetrate a forest. "Blue, White and Red", has an explosive broader brush line, more like an abstract expressionist blue line against a rough white or the final lighter blue flat ground. This piece emphasizes the difference from an earlier artist, such as Franz Kline, for Chinyee's bold strokes are made with a full understanding of Sumye drawing and are loose and free, never depending on architectonic composition. Nevertheless, even here is an illusion of a grid and qualities of surface texture.

Besides the loaded brush, the grids, Chinyee also makes use of a splattering effect and, as in "Tiananmen Square", of dripping. She has the Chinese sense of composition that commands the entire canvas. She also possesses the Zen mystery of union with Nature, and these feelings of totality give union and strength to her canvases. She employs Western techniques of modern painting so brilliantly because she comprehends how they suit corresponding Oriental methods.

While the calligraphy is her forte in this recent series because she shows the skill of making it flexible to many and various purposes and because she brings it in tension with her basic form, it is her light, the glow from within, which renders to Chinyee her universality.