Japanese Apples

"During the two years I spent in Japan, I met an elderly man who gave me my first calligraphy lesson. He couldn't really speak English and my Japanese was limited but I learned by observing anyway. Everything about the process was beautiful, beginning with the unrolling of the rice paper and the placing of little weights to hold the paper in place, to the actual flow of the brushwork forming the characters. The apples as still life were also inspired in part by my experience overseas. When I visited Japanese homes, I would admire the shrines to the ancestors that were filled with fresh fruit. The arrangement of the fruit always had an aesthetic aspect which seemed to help elevate the offering to a higher meaning."