Inklings of Grace

Dolphins and butterflies are wonderful, playful calligraphers. Their movements inscribe the water and air in which they move.  I, too, am such a calligrapher; I play with brushes, ink, water, and paper.   Characters become playmates like lions, dolphins, and children.  Brush play is a collection of inklings that capture flashes of my wonder and enthusiasm at playing with life.  If the children and animals did the calligraphy it would disappear like faint markings in the sand left by a child drawing with a stick along an ocean beach.

It seems only right that I am continuing a tradition that legend has it was begun by a four-eyed man named Yamamoto in the third millennium B.C. who was inspired by animal tracks to paint characters.

My characters are renderings, which means to interpret or express and also to surrender or yield.  My renditions are not intended to be literal, scholarly, or even accurate, but yet true—faithful to the living spirit of play.  What I mean to transmit is the emotion, wonder, and mystery that my playmates have shared with me. The characters come into my mind smelling of grass, dirt, and ocean and feeling of wolf, dolphin, and infant.  Their passion and grace have energized me and worn me and out.  I am reminded of what St. Thomas Aquinas wrote at the end of his life, “’Everything I’ve written seems to me like empty straw compared to what I’ve seen.’”  

Both play and calligraphy are matters of touch. The human skin and rice paper are absorbent making first contacts decisive; as in play’s touch no calligraphy stroke can be repaired.  In both play and calligraphy the state of one’s heart is communicated directly through the hands.  Matters of technique are secondary.  It is the underlying presence that is crucial.

My inklings are hints of play presented sparsely, like mental and visual haiku, testimony to the fact that everything is not said when one creates words. You may think of my calligraphy as the few, deft, incisive brush strokes in a Chinese landscape painting inviting you to enter into a transaction with it by presenting you with suggestions, pregnant emptiness enabling you to create forms.

Hints, like stories, work best when they are told to the very young or to those who have not forgotten how to open themselves without preconceptions to other possibilities, who can accept that even everyday life can be a playground. Your musings, smiles, laughs, and reveries will remind you that the real sharing in play is almost entirely non-verbal.  While understandings and discussions are phrased in words, words obtain their wisdom when your own experience gives them meaning.

I want to thank three mentors, Chung-liang Al Huang, Kaz Tanahashi, and Alok Hsu Kwang-han for the extent to which they have influenced me, my calligraphy, and my play.  Each of these men plays masterfully with brush, ink, and paper to create what we non-artists call calligraphy.  I can imagine each of them agreeing with Pablo Picasso’s wonderful remark: “Don’t blame me for those fantastic prices and possessings.  I’m only playing” and laughing along with Zen Master Sengai’s words, “This play of mine with brush and ink is neither calligraphy nor drawing.  Yet in the view of common minded people it becomes mere calligraphy and drawing.”

O. Fred Donaldson