Japanese Calligraphy in Lockdown, 2020

During the spring of 2020 I found myself stuck at home due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. I decided to use this time to learn Japanese calligraphy in order to grow myself as an artist.

Being able to practice Shodo (the art of Japanese calligraphy) was something I had been drawn to for a while. I loved the boldness of the black ink on white paper. I also admired the mental focus needed ‘in the moment’ when a mark is being created in one go, with no corrections afterwards. One brushstroke, one chance.

Most Westerners think of Shodo as an art form of beautiful writing, yet there is so much more.
It is an activity that transforms the art of brushing into a spiritual path. It is used to connection to the higher force/universe known in Japanese as “ki’ - life energy. The calligraphy literally expresses the artist’s energy flow in the moment. As you can imagine, the real mastery and skill requires a lot of practice and connection to the inner self. There is also a lot of focus on clearing the mind, so we can be fully in the moment and connect to the ki energy that the brush follows (rather than us controlling the brush).

It wasn’t easy to start with but I was lucky to find some great teachers.
I have committed to brushing every day as requested. I started with learning brush strokes techniques and then progressed to writing characters and then longer words. I must say, my favourite part is working with ki energy and using it to express the meaning of the character influenced by own spirit.
As my skills grew, I found myself taking shodo characters as inspiration for creating contemporary art works that can be enjoyed and understood by Westerners and Japanese.

Today, I still strive to brush my caligraphy every day - whenever I can :)