As part of the Fine Art Degree that I’m working towards, I’ve recently been asked to prepare a Dissertation Proposal. One thing that this involves is choosing which books and journals to use as research material. It’s got me thinking about how many books I’ve read and referred to since I started this Degree. It’s amazing how one thing leads to another and one book can easily lead to many others, particularly when you look at the books the writer has used in their own research!
Luckily for me around the time that I started this course a friend bought themselves a new cupboard and asked my partner Mark to take their old cupboard to the dump (because they don’t have a car and we do). The cupboard never made it to the dump because I thought I could repurpose it, and it became my ‘Uni’ bookcase. Little did I know how quickly that bookcase would fill up!
So these are the books I’ve been referring to this year, I already removed some from last year and there has also been a whole load of books that I’ve borrowed from the University Library too. Also, there have been many more journals and publications that I’ve read, used as reference material and in some cases, kept.
In case you’re reading this and I’m putting you off doing a Fine Art Degree, I should add that almost all of the reading I’ve done has been a real pleasure – because it’s all about topics that I find really interesting, so I’m not complaining. Also, the more I’ve read and learned the more informed and meaningful my artwork has become, which has both inspired and motivated me. In fact, it has taught me a new way of working as an artist: researching, experimenting, refining and creating artwork as an on-going process – all leading to a body of work rather than just one final piece.
Here’s a glimpse of how things are coming along in my studio, you can see here some of my latest experiments and the beginnings of my plans for my final artworks at the end of this term.
‘Bee and Honeycomb’ Feminine, Nurturer, Unpaid Worker, Struggle for Survival
‘Faded Bee Goddess, Melissa’ Forgotten, Invisible, Diminished
‘Divine Feminine’ Eternal, Precious, Unseen realities, Inner truths
‘In my sketchbook … plans and ideas’ Hexagon, Timeline, Recumbent Goddess, 3% Survival
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