“Stay home” work – Five styles of “home”

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, many of us have to stay home for a certain period of time. In my case, some art exhibitions in which I planned to participate have been cancelled or postponed just like other events across the world. I stopped all the creations for the next exhibition. The theme and size of the work that I want to work on have changed.

Basic five styles of kanji in calligraphy

In that situation, I tried to write various styles of kanji describing “家”.  家 in Japanese means home, house and family, etc. Even though the original kanji is the same, each style gives different impression. In the picture of the above work, from right to left, there are five styles.

• Block script
• Running script
• Cursive script
• Clerical script
• Seal script

Each writing style is not simply different in shape, but is based on the historical accumulation of the style.