TRACES OF SHODŌ
Margaret Kerr and Blair Shōgen Thomson
Green Gallery: University of Dundee Botanic Garden
Riverside Drive, Dundee DD2 1QH
30th Nov – 18th Dec 2024
This exhibition shows a series of spontaneous abstract drawings inspired by the flowing and dynamic forms of traditional Japanese Shodō calligraphy, made by Margaret Kerr over the past three years. Alongside these drawings are examples taken from Blair Shōgen Thomson’s regular practice of traditional Shodō. The calligraphy pieces and drawings together describe natural, elemental and poetic themes.
Margaret’s drawings came about in response to plants and places. In many of them, fallen branches were used as brush or stylus, and the marks that resulted reflect the physical nature of the plant itself – its flexibility, texture and movement. Other works were made alongside burns, natural pools and waterfalls, and allowed paper and ink to incorporate and respond to the movement of water.
Margaret has studied basic Shodō calligraphy practice in recent years with friend and mentor Blair. The practice helped Margaret to learn a way of relaxing more deeply while drawing and to let mark-making come directly from intuition, body and environment.
Blair’s Shodō pieces are examples taken from his ongoing regular studio practice which investigates Zen Buddhist themes such as the wondrous nature of reality, and explore Chinese and Japanese poetry and calligraphy text relationships through a mix of copying works by masters and developing sakuhin 作品(artistic works). He is very grateful to have learned nature based mindfulness from Margaret and to have worked with her exploring embodied, meditative creative practices, and mark-making at the dissolving boundaries of writing and pictorial forms.
Margaret Kerr is a PhD student at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) in Dundee. She graduated with an MFA in Art and Humanities from DJCAD in 2019. Her practice-led PhD investigates history, land and sense of place in Scotland through the lens of Indigenous and Non-Western ways of knowing. She teaches mindfulness and nature-based meditation practices and is a member of the Glasgow Zen Group.
Blair Shōgen Thomson is a calligrapher, artist and Zen teacher exploring suchness (J: shinnyo 真如) and dynamic impermanence through various approaches. After graduating from Glasgow School of Art in 2002, he trained with Shūjō Wakabayashi (Toyama, Japan), learning traditional ways of writing as well as collaborating experimentally, and exhibiting with him in 2009 and 2012. Since Shūjō Wakabayashi passed away, Blair has had further training in the highly technical Shokaisha school (Tokyo) and also with Sōtō Zen monastics. He is currently a doctoral student researching Japanese Zen calligraphy at Bristol University.
