neophytism

With his back to the wall, driven to bay by his former masters, Khemsa was fighting for his life with all the dark power, all the frightful knowledge they had taught him through long, grim years of neophytism and vassalage.

While the label is no doubt limiting, the artist's atypical ability to combine the fantastic with the banal, personal distortion with autobiography, and joy with torment is a strong example of the tripartite tension between academism, realism, and neophytism central to the traditions of Naïve, Raw, and Outsider art.