Monogatari2 Painting

Sachiyo Kaneko was born in Tokyo, Japan. She started to learn SHO, so called Japanese/Chinese calligraphy, at 7 years old. She started to learn from the copy of ‘Lantingji Xu’ (by Wang Xizhi, Chinese classic master) when she was only 12 years old. It was gifted education. She is one of few SHOKAs, so called calligraphers, who acquire the skills of whole techniques throughout SHO history from oracle bone script to Japanese Kana and seal curving. She has won the numerous prizes in national contests since she started to apply when she was 13 years old. She joined study tours to China 6 times. She visited important places related to Chinese classic masterpieces. Yumen pass in Gobi desert, Dunhuan, Xian, Hanzhong, Qingdao, Qufu etc. in addition to Beijin, Shanhai. She even climbed Taishan and Yunfengshan. She met curved characters on Rocks in the mountains, important stone monuments, ancient letters on wooden/bamboo sticks, oracle bone scripts and so on. This experience helped her to understand this traditional art deeply. In her life, she has visited more than 20 countries. Digging oriental traditional art for a long time and watching around the world widely. These two aspects in different vectors give her art an original taste, view, perspective of the world. The trip to San Miguel de Allende(Mexico) in 2002-2003 especially changed her life. This new world turned over her points of view completely. She had already started exhibitions with her abstract SHO works in 2000. But she started to seek her own art as ‘expression’ without categorizing like SHO. While studying world art by visiting museums energetically, she got attracted by Amedeo C. Modigliani(Italy, 1884-1920) and Rufino Tamayo(Mexico, 1899-1991) in particular. They are very different. Different arts, different countries, different ways of life. But these two artists have roots in very primitive things and emit strong energy from there. It was very natural for Sachiyo to sympathize with them, because she had been with old scripts all her life since she was a child. Their works encouraged and inspired her a lot. She could re-recognize that there is stronger power than its visible shape very much. What is making her keep creating? The answer is ‘to encounter herself’. She says creation is like meditation. When she completes a work innocently, there she finds her unconsciousness which she did not known. We cannot control unconsciousness.