I worked from Suenaga 末永 Sensei’s reisho 隷書 style of a peaceful and joyful poem by 6th C Chinese poet 陸瓊 （りく けい）Rikukei: 春風秋月恒好 spring wind autumn moon always pleasing It was very likeable too brushing this on the large hansetsu size paper, lots of fun with a long tip fude. Some of the kanji …
Continue reading “In reisho calligraphy – the movement and light of the seasons”
Our first online Shakyo 写経 practice event saw us come together from Scotland, and elsewhere such as the rest of the UK and Canada, forming a lovely group of sutra tracing and copying practitioners. This was a joint event I led for the D+P Studio and Glasgow Zen Group. Beginning with an introduction about the …
Continue reading “Shakyo – bringing the Sutra to life with each brush stroke and pen mark”
Towards the end of the year as the dry leaves rustled across the pavements, Blair practiced Shakyo Sutra tracing at temples in Tokyo, working mainly from Genjo’s version of the Hannya Shingyo – Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra. You can see the hanging scroll of Genjo / Xuanzang in the Soto Zen shakyo …
Continue reading “Tracing the heart of the Heart Sutra – Tokyo 2019”
Trying out the zen enso circle, symbol of universality and the idea of beauty within imperfection. Small to medium fude for sho on single hanshi sheets. Working on the character nen – commonly translated as mindfulness or mindful, also attention or care. There is a balance needed between the two parts of the kanji. The …
Making some marks with fude brushes and fudepen using Japanese sumi ink. Beginning practicing for a series of three Drawing and Painting Studio workshops. Experimenting with the brush stopping and flicking, speed of the marks and energy. In the first Shodo group the Kanji characters ten – heavens/ sky and shin or kokoro – heart/ …
Here are a selection of images of the show plus some Omotesando street views around Gallery 80 in Omotesando Hills building (Aoyama area, Tokyo). It was a very pleasant time of year with the Autumn leaves gathering and crisp clear blue nights…
I’m getting everything together just now for the show in Omotesando Hills, Gallery 80 ( 12-18th November). There is going to be a series of 24 small paintings and several drawings, rubbings and printmaking, and will be my first show to feature photography with a series of ten works plus larger scale pieces, plus I’m …
The Glasgow based Roger Billcliffe Gallery asked me for some work for their ’20:20 vision’ (Summer Exhibition 2012 from 16th june through july) and I popped round from the studio to hand in this small acrylic and Japanese sumi ink piece the other day. Titled ‘Fragmented’ I was looking at the dynamics and light through …
These works are joint-pieces, landscape project wide scroll like artworks by students I have worked with. The first piece was made at my studio in winter and the second was made on the inspiring Abernethy annual art excursion (Hamilton College) to the Cairngorms area, where I am fortunate to enjoy making artwork and doing some …
Recent studies using mixed media on card, paper and sketchbooks have been leading to much more free and abstracted pieces that is the way I’m trying to push forward into more poetic, less pictorially restricted territory… ‘Flowing Through Space’ (top-left) was a bit of a breakthrough. Many of these pieces are moving fluidly through city …
