Man ten (満天) by Asako Yamada

Why I started calligraphy - Asako Yamada

One day when I was in high school, my teacher was in a good enough mood to praise my calligraphy the whole class through. It prompted me to pursue calligraphy.

Later, he saw that I was not at all interested in traditional calligraphy. He gave me two sheets of large tatami-mat-sized Japanese paper and the most gigantic calligraphy brush I’d ever seen and said, “Get down to it! Follow your intuition.” That was the moment my insecurity of whether I was good or bad vanished. I just followed my instincts with that brush. It was a blissful moment. Nothing more. I did not possess any technique, but I selected certain characters and expressed whatever came into my mind. It felt good to have what I imagined emerge on a piece of paper in a matter of a second with a slap of a brush.

I have a special interest in the force of brushes and intensity of handwriting which represent profound pleasure of calligraphy art.

Since then, I have continued to practice the impromptu art of calligraphy. The reason, I think, Is that I aspire to live fully in the now, and not to be bound by the past or the future. A calligrapher neither draws a draft nor rehearses. Once done, a piece cannot be reworked or altered, so a calligrapher usually writes numerous pieces at a time and chooses only one to keep. Through my practice of calligraphy, an artistic expression of living in the now, I would like to continue to write characters that show no hesitation.
And here I am ……