Lucidity (Sumi)

There is a brushwork technique called nijimi (“to blur” or “to blot“) that creates a voluminous line; the bleeding edges of the brush stroke complement the energy at the heart of the line. The calligraphy that Seikai Kunii (1913–2009) created is of the solitary character “lucidity”, in which he employed the techniques of nijimi and kasuri. This ideogram, which means “lucid“ or “transparent”, perfectly captures Seikai’s philosophy about the artistic nature of calligraphy, which is that the characters should express their meaning clearly, and a calligrapher must not only be able to capture the meaning of the character, but also to inject his own inner feelings into its form.