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My Calligraphic Way

Moosan Huh Hwe-Tae

What is calligraphy when poetry is a talking picture and painting is silent poetry?

Calligraphy is located in the middle of poetry-calligraphy-painting Siseohwa (詩書畵), which is often referred to as a bundle. Calligraphy is both painting and poetry, and poetry and painting. So, I think that it may act as a medium that connects poetry and painting by standing between two domains.

Poems shine as calligraphy and then become a painting. Calligraphy is a poem that speaks and a picture that speaks. I believe that when a calligraphy artist is not only a calligrapher but also a poet and painter, he can enrich his/her art world.

As in most arts such as literature, art, and music, calligraphy is filled with artisans' souls and life traits.

Poems are in thousand languages, paintings are in thousand colors, and music is in thousand strings with infinite expression tools, but calligraphy only has thickness and thinness of ink. There is only one point, one line of ink, richness, and dryness of ink, the thickness of the line, and the strength and weakness of the brush. There is no splendor here. Infinitely simple.

However, within its simplicity, there is infiniteness that surpasses a thousand words, colors, and sounds. Rather, in its simplicity, I find all kinds of words, colors, and notes.

When a person sits alone in an empty library and meditates on the sentence of Sigyung (詩經: Book of Poetry) before grounding an ink stick and brushing on paper, the calligrapher becomes a free man. At that time, only the black ink becomes azalea pink, and the peony of summer and the colorful colors of autumn chrysanthemum and winter camellia and the calligrapher can bring the flat language of poetry to the sensuous world of painting.

That's calligraphy and my work begins like that.

A single calligrapher is born after years of hard work. Most beginners in calligraphy will learn the spirit and technique through the handwritten manuscripts left by sage, or through the process of cultivating certain writing methods.

Efforts to find your own world while exploring the thoughts and uniqueness of calligraphy with a selective view of the classics are common to everyone, and I am no exception. For those who practice calligraphy, so that the ink does not dry out, the bones are getting thick in the smell of the ink and the smell of the book, and the character-scent and chi of books must naturally be absorbed in the body. My theory is that you can become an artisan who can pursue your own formative language by going through those practice processes.

I often order to myself that it is my fate that I should walk on the road that goes to the gold mine in only one way without wandering left and right side.

It is said that art comes when there is a wave of emotion in the heart. It means that when you observe things silently when inspiration arises from the object, it is the right time to lift up the brush.

It contains the meaning of silent sympathy Mukjiksimyung (默識心融), which imitates the harmony of nature outside and obtains it from the source of the heart. Depending on how you look deeply into the essence of calligraphic art, and how you project the soul of the artist, your work may become alive or dead.

It is not fair for the artist to discuss his or her own world of artwork. It's easy to be a self-sufficient, so it's up to only the critics. However, I have reconsidered the value of the thought I value here and the universal framework.

Just as there is a saying that the heart of initiation is the beginning of recognition in Buddhism, the way of a calligrapher who always thinks that there is only a way to go back to the beginning, to ground black ink, again and again, to write on and write on the drawing paper, and to think and think more to be.

Chae Geun-dam (Cai Gen Tan) said, "The people of the world only knew how to read Yujaseo (有字書, books with letters), but they didn't know how to read Mujaseo (無字書, books without letters), and only knew how to play Yuhyungeum (有絃琴, a lyre with strings), but they did not know how to play Muhyungeum (無絃琴, a lyre without strings).

Chae Geun-dam, scolding the people of the world for not knowing the spirit, but chasing only the shell and trying to know the true taste of a lyre and a book, added, "Hearing through the sound is not good as listening in the silence, and enjoying the appearance is not good as like enjoying in the disappearance.”

Seo Hwa-dam's aphorism that art is not done with the ears but with the heart is still far from me.

Translated by Solti

July 4th, 2020