The First few Months of my Master’s

A hand-made accordion sketchbook I've been filling with scenes from my winter garden.

My first few months of study for my Master by Research in visual art have, as expected, kept things very busy. It’s taken me a while to find my feet and wake up my brain to the academic world again, and it has honestly been a joy to be able to devote myself to it. This is a privilege that I do not take lightly!  While I have been continuing with licensing, teaching workshops, and taking on a small amount of commission work to keep the financial ball rolling, most of my time has been spent with learning the ropes for post-graduate study.

Alongside the academic work, I have been making artwork fuelled by my research that is very VERY different to what you usually see from me.  This is to be expected with the kind of project I am doing, as the making of art is a part of the inquiry itself. It has meant that as my work is in an embryonic state, and I myself don't entirely know what it is about yet as it is still emerging! My discipline of study, which is a relatively new one, is ‘Practice-led- research’ (Sometimes also called artistic research, or practice-based research, among other terms). 

It is a unique, spiralling process of creating artwork, which informs what you are researching, and then bringing that knowledge back to the art making process again to see what unique insights emerge.  This process repeats until you complete the body of artwork which is exhibited in a solo show. I’m also required to write an exegesis (a smaller thesis) that will accompany an artwork exhibition and further elucidate my findings. This method of working feels very aligned with how I have been practicing over the past couple of years.  As the current body of work is still embryonic and emerging, I don't quite feel free to share this on social media yet. But I don't mind sharing a few little snaps here to my inner circle😊

Practice-led-research is at once a joy and also very edgy. It takes me back into the state of ‘not knowing’ where I creative project is heading to.  It’s very different to the professional art practice I’ve developed over the past decade, where the focus is on creating what sells.  This kind of unknowing and the explorations that result from research-based inquiry is one of the reasons I took on a research-based MA.  Not only did I feel the need to shift the primary metric of success away from sales, I also craved that feeling of newness again that you have in the early stages of being an artist.

So, it has been interesting to see what aspects of my art practice have remained and what has changed over the last 3 months as I evolve this new body of work.  The one consistent thing that is still showing up in my practice is my focus on my own garden for inspiration.  I am exploring my own connection with my garden, alongside that of other female artists throughout history, as part of my research. I have begun a project of recording the seasons in my own garden through small, intimate, handmade sketchbooks.  Working in this small and intimate way with watercolour and mixed media is such a beautiful process, and my back is also very happy with the shift away from enormous canvases! It also fits with the historical sketchbooks and manuscripts I am looking at in the archives.

While not entirely new to me, I have also been working with pressed botanicals.  I have upped my herbarium game with making larger presses, according to the guidelines of official herbariums, and have big plans for these in my work. I’ve been researching the conventions and taxonomy of herbariums and playing around with them in a project that I am calling my ‘Memorium’. It is exploring the role of botanicals in the recollection of personal memories. These works on paper are difficlut to share in photos, as they are multi-layered and intended to be explored by band. I’ve longed to play with pressed botanicals in my mixed media work more extensively, so it’s wonderful to have carved out the space to do this for my MA.

As I progress, I have about a thousand ideas a day and then they all change the next day! It’s a wild ride and I love the creative and intellectual stimulation of it all!

In a few days I will be travelling to Canberra with my family for a bit of a working holiday.  I'll be visiting the Australian National Library to view some incredible sketchbooks, books, artworks, and manuscripts from the 19th and 20th centuries, of some for the female artists I am researching.

Then I'll be spending some time with at my parent’s place for a while to devote time to painting the beautiful garden that they have lovingly created over many years, that was a formative place of my creative emergence.

I look forward to filling you in on the next phase of the journey, til then, take care!

Suse 😊