Rodica Frentiu

Japanese Calligraphy: the Path Between Eye and Spirit Rodica Frentiu

Why Japanese calligraphy? This is a question I have been asked countless times both in Romania and in Japan, not without reason, which I can only answer either by picking up the brush and drawing, or by trying to put into words my impressions and readings on this traditional Japanese art... For a foreigner, the attempt to translate sho[d?] into the language of his own culture proves rather daring. The austerity created on paper by the black and the white becomes a secret for those belonging to another stylistic horizon, where the eye is bathed in color... But the hidden invites, beckons, asks to be unveiled. Looking at the character born from a single breath of the brush, the foreigner feels the inner energy of the graphic sign pulling him into the space of the white paper, a space arranged for him by the master calligrapher's eye, whether he is an initiated or uninitiated guest, whether prepared or not for the encounter with the spirit? An experience traversed by fear, cries, pain, anguish, joy? A white territory, filled with the emotion of a black line...