On Creativity – an Interview with Kazuaki Tanahashi
by Miguel Mendonça, October 2020 *reprinted with permission from Kazuaki Tanahashi MM: What drew you to your medium? East Asian calligraphy—Chinese, Korean , or Japanese—fascinated me in my youth. There is so much to learn and express. So, I became serious and eventually started exhibiting my artwork. I also studied oil painting and Western drawing at the same time. I started combining these disciplines. For example, calligraphers don’t go off the edge of the paper, but painters do. I did calligraphy in an expressive Western painters’ way. It was a small town near the city of Nagoya in the central part of Japan where I studied calligraphy. I was tutored but in a class at a local community center. I didn’t want to study with a famous calligrapher or painter, because I would be his or her student for the rest of my life. So, I chose someone who was not well known. MM: Do you feel a connection with the history of your medium? East Asian and Western calligraphers are by large classicists. In …