It is said that, when it comes to learning calligraphy, the first 30 years are the most difficult.
Mercifully, not every calligrapher waits that long before we see their work. Often though, when we do see it in art shops, we are tempted to dismiss it. We might look at the text and think how so-and-so would be heartened by it, and buy it as an inexpensive gift.
Nothing wrong with that as far as it goes, except that we could see so much more.
Here is a piece by artist Laura Swatridge.
A suggestion: for the moment, don’t read the text or admire the skill.
Look at it simply as an image, as a beautiful thing. A white space is the setting for curls and flourishes, laid on the surface in graduations of magenta. They seem to almost bounce around in a friendly jostle. We could imagine them moving, animated. Flowing might be a better word. Suitably framed and on a wall, this would make a very pleasing piece of art; a beautiful object.
We could stay with that experience, and be none the worse for it.
But it’s safe now to look at the text as text, now that we’ve made time to appreciate this as a piece of art. The text shares a quality with painting, photography and engraving – it was created by a human hand and a human mind. In a world largely dominated by machine-generated images and words, this is an increasingly precious quality. It is uniquely human and humane. For me, this adds to our appreciation of the beauty of the whole object. And we can allow the words to bounce around in our heads as they do on the paper. We can give them permission to be out of context, ambiguous and anything they damned-well want to be.
(Of course we might want to reflect on the words too – and why not? Isn’t that what words are for? To be understood and thought about? But then we are drifting away from the beauty of the whole piece).
Calligraphy is not an elegant or ornate way of writing.
Calligraphy - like all art - re-presents the world to us.
You can see more of Laura’s work at the Montague Gallery in Worthing
or at
Website Address: http://www.lauraloves.art
Instagram: Laura Love Letters
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