I've just re-read last nights late night emotional brain-dump and it made me laugh! I can laugh because I sent it to Jonathan and asked him to read the introduction and conclusion and tell me whether they actually ask and then answer the question. Being the amazing human that he is he obviously read the whole thing because he's thoroughly boosted my confidence that it's just about there, it does ask and answer a question and on top of that it makes sense and is critical. PHEW!!!!
I feel like I can now stop obsessing over the actual paper quite so much and instead focus on the benefits I've gained from writing it.
I have realised that I do a lot of my best thinking when I'm waking in the forest. I have little conversations with myself and I need to find a way to capture them. I have started making voice memo's and then making notes from them over a cup of coffee once home. I like writing things down - just having the recordings doesn't work for me, I need to see things on a written page. The little brown exercise books I bought from Paperchase and use to take lecture notes are brilliant - small enough to carry about but big enough to hold lots of info. I've got one completely devoted to the research paper which I'm going to keep forever as it has so much amazing stuff in it!
I was musing over why I was panicking about the paper and came to the conclusion that it's a confidence thing (isn't it always!?!). I don't think I think or write in a particularly complicated way, I'm always over-awed by people that have those big complicated thoughts that I can't grasp, then they can write them in a way that makes me long for a 'translate' button. The fact that they do it annoys me because I don't understand it, but it also impresses me that they can do that because I can't. I don't feel the need to try to copy them, but it makes me feel 'simple' by comparison. I don't think I have a particularly complicated vocabulary, I haven't 'studied' art before and therefore lots of the ways it's written about is alien to me and I think these things make me worried I'm not quite 'good enough' to actually achieve the level of thinking necessary for Masters study.
It's the criticality that worried me. I knew I'd done lots of research and I knew I'd presented all of that, but trying to make sure that I'd put enough of my own thoughts and analysis of what I'd researched, that was the bit that worried me. I said to my paper tutor at the second draft stage that I was worried that all the links and further thinking I'd done were still in my head - I hadn't made them clear enough on the paper, she seemed to concur but I wasn't quite sure whether it was seriously under critical or about right for that stage. I should have pressed her further. AGAIN with my ridiculousness about asking questions - I really must get over thinking it's rude - she was there to help me!! I was worried that I was leaving the reader to make the same mental leaps I'd made and assuming they would, but of course you can't assume that, you have to write it down. Then the process of figuring out what is obvious to everyone and doesn't need further explanation and what is obvious to me and I'm relying on in my arugement needed deciphering and that's a really tricky thing to do! It's certainly fascinating.
In a way I wish that we had twice the words as I'd love to continue a deeper dive into these two artists looking at the role practice-based research has on the work and also how over time both artists seem to become more abstract in their image making, I wonder whether that is a result of the concept taking over. As you make more and more images of the same place do you grow in confidence that you don't need to 'explain' the scene any more, people have seen it, instead you can given them more of what's behind the scenes in your thinking about the scene? Does the visual theory or the message of the image take over from the depiction of the original inspiration? So many more questions!
Anyway, I've certainly got lots to think about and can't wait to get sticking things into a sketchbook to develop al these ideas!
I can't resist putting this picture here - One of Cezanne's last images of Mont Sainte-Victoire... I saw this one at the National Gallery in London, it lives in Philadelphia along with an awful lot more of his work. I wonder whether I could convince my husband to a little trip across the pond at some point?!
