Under the moonlight
Painting, Abstract informal, Ink, 75x54cm
contemporary art based on Japanese calligraphy, SHO.
SHO is an art of the line. What is the line? It is a mark that a brush and paper have touched. However, what can you see there? Not only do you see beauty of form drawn on paper, but also motion before a brush touches paper, the speed and pressure of a brush touching paper, and movement and distance after a brush has been apart from paper. All of this makes up one line. We can relive the time that the artist spent and can feel even the artist’s emotion by chasing the line. The line is like a time travel machine. We can touch the artist’s breathing directly from his or her works exceeding the age. Even if we don’t see the artist produce the work, we can still experience its production.
Return your eyes on the entire work again. Black lines and white space are seen there. This blank is the most important thing in a Japanese sense of beauty. This blank is intentional. Japanese feel the sound of the lines and project their own feelings here. Now the work is completed at last.
After beginning to engrave characters on animals’ bones 4000 years ago, Chinese believe that characters have power and they have been valuing them. They pursued not only a practical side of characters to tell meanings correctly, but also the artistic side of them. They created various styles of characters over time. SHO has been developed mainly to draw characters beautifully in Japan as well.
However, I am trying to be free from the restriction of “meanings of characters” by giving priority more in another beauty of SHO, lines, and to convey my feelings straightly by SHO. I believe that this expression of the line, the throb of life, is a primitive means that everyone can sympathize without the language barrier.
I'm trying to translate the spirit of the tradition of Japanese calligraphy into the modern way of drawing.
SHO is an art of the line. What is the line? It is a mark that a brush and paper have touched. However, what can you see there? Not only do you see beauty of form drawn on paper, but also motion before a brush touches paper, the speed and pressure of a brush touching paper, and movement and distance after a brush has been apart from paper. All of this makes up one line. We can relive the time that the artist spent and can feel even the artist’s emotion by chasing the line. The line is like a time travel machine. We can touch the artist’s breathing directly from his or her works exceeding the age. Even if we don’t see the artist produce the work, we can still experience its production.
Return your eyes on the entire work again. Black lines and white space are seen there. This blank is the most important thing in a Japanese sense of beauty. This blank is intentional. Japanese feel the sound of the lines and project their own feelings here. Now the work is completed at last.
After beginning to engrave characters on animals’ bones 4000 years ago, Chinese believe that characters have power and they have been valuing them. They pursued not only a practical side of characters to tell meanings correctly, but also the artistic side of them. They created various styles of characters over time. SHO has been developed mainly to draw characters beautifully in Japan as well.
However, I am trying to be free from the restriction of “meanings of characters” by giving priority more in another beauty of SHO, lines, and to convey my feelings straightly by SHO. I believe that this expression of the line, the throb of life, is a primitive means that everyone can sympathize without the language barrier.
I'm trying to translate the spirit of the tradition of Japanese calligraphy into the modern way of drawing.
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