KOCHI:
Calligraphy best expresses one’s state of mind and follows a process that enables a unique coordination of the mind and body, according to Bryan Mulvihill who has for over half-a-century’s experience in the visual art related to writing.
At a three-day workshop being organised by the Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF) amid its 108-day contemporary art festival, Bryan highlighted how calligraphy aids one to scale a high point of inner feeling called ‘shunyata’. “It’s one where the mind is clear deep down yet aware of everything around,” he said amid the January 27-29 session that is on at KBF’s art room in a key biennale venue of Cabral Yard in Fort Kochi.
“I am trying to pass to the trainees (mostly children) this technique via calligraphy,” he pointed out, also referring to the four treasures of artists into this field: brush, ink, ink-stone and paper. “These are the essential tools required on the work table.”
Substantiating on ‘shunyata’, Bryan said an art-form emerging from that state of mind scales the heights like none other. “Simply, it is a form of churning out that form energy from a life force within us. That gets expressed as the art,” he added.
The master appreciating the “amazing way” the children were responding to his tips at the workshop concluding on Wednesday. “I am happy to know that they are getting what I am trying to convey,” he said.
Around 20 students from Chinmaya Vidyalaya at Kannamaly in Kochi were among the trainees at the workshop. Abhijeet A J, a class-5 student, said the session has helped him learn the significance of calmness. “The master has taught me how it can help us to come up with clear and productive results if we are quiet inside,” he added. “Our mind and body has to be one while doing the calligraphy.”
For Abhirami T A of class 8, calligraphy is a new art that she is learning. “It is amazing,” she notes. “At the start (of the session), I thought it would be a bit hard to understand. But the master is great in his answers to my questions. I am slowly getting a hang of it.”
Bryan, who has been practising calligraphy for five decades after studying under several oriental masters from China, Japan and Korea, besides some in the Middle East, derives inspiration also from the 1950s Beat Generation fathers such as Brion Gysin, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.
At the art room here, school student Pranav C Shine notes that calligraphy, despite its complex looks at the outset, is “really easy once you understand the technique.”
According to Blaise Joseph who heads the KBF’s Art by Children programme that is organising the workshop series, calligraphy talks about mindfulness. “These children have got the opportunity to learn it from such a big name in the field,” he said.
Today being Monday, entry is free to the biennale. Several children turned up in the forenoon and afternoon to watch the exhibits at the main Aspinwall House venue in Fort Kochi.
