Revisiting the Unit 2 To Do List.
When the feedback came back after Unit 2, one of the things Jonathan reflected on was that the to do list I had drawn up was enough to sustain a lifetime of practice. Reading back through it now, I think he was right. It spreads across research, materials, process, place, communication, and a set of ongoing questions that do not resolve so much as keep opening. It was never really meant to be completed. It was more of a map of where the practice could go.
As I reach the end of Unit 3, and with a growing sense that I want to take this work into a PhD, I have found myself being more deliberate about what I choose to follow. The threads that feel most generative for what comes next are the ones that deepen rather than widen the scope of the work. So this post is an attempt to honestly account for what I have engaged with over the course of this final unit, and what I have consciously set aside for now.
What I Followed Up On.
The suggestion to extend my research beyond pain as metaphor into more embodied and neuroscientific territory has shaped a lot of what I have written this term. The posts on alexithymia grew directly from the feedback's prompt to think about scientific and psychological perspectives on pain and internal experience. Sitting with the idea of internal damage that is not visible from the outside, which was one of the questions raised in relation to the lightning-struck trees, led me somewhere I did not entirely anticipate, towards understanding my own diagnostic experience as something that reframes the work rather than redirecting it. The connections between chronic pain, neurodivergence, and non-verbal communication have become more central to the practice as a result, and feel like the threads I most want to carry forward.
The encouragement to continue reading around bodies, language, and non-verbal communication also opened up in directions I had not predicted. Anna Tsing's The Mushroom at the End of the World was not explicitly on the list, but it answered something the list was pointing towards. Questions about survival, about growing at your own pace, about what it means to exist in relation to other things rather than in isolation. Her idea of assemblage gave me language for something I had been feeling in the work without being able to name it, and that has been useful.
Materially, I have continued working on wood, though I have been more cautious about fully abandoning gesso and more traditional canvas boards than the feedback perhaps pushed me towards. I think that resistance is worth naming here rather than glossing over. There is something in the act of smoothing a surface that I have not finished thinking through yet, whether it is protective, habitual, or both. The feedback asked me to question it and I have, but that questioning has not led me to abandon it, at least not yet.
The feedback's suggestion to think about tree-derived inks and materials that carry their own relationship to the subject matter has also started to move, though through a slightly unexpected route. Researching natural dyes led me to realise that the marigolds we grow in the garden every year can also be used to make painting ink. I have written about this more fully in a separate post, but the short version is that I have sown a much larger crop this season with the intention of drying and processing them in autumn. This has opened up a broader question about pace and sustainability in the practice, and what it means to work with the rhythms of a growing season rather than reaching for convenience. I have not yet made oak gall ink, and that remains on the list, but the marigold research feels like a way into that same territory through a route that is already embedded in daily life.
The place-based suggestions have probably been the most fully realised part of the list. Returning to Kingussie in April, bringing the paintings into the landscape they came from and photographing them there, felt like a direct response to the idea of returning work to its origin. That had been on the list as an experiment, something to try even temporarily, and the experience of actually doing it changed how I understood both the paintings and the place. The trip also shaped the 5 minute video, and I think the work is stronger for it.
Richard Long and Hamish Fulton were not on the original list either, but they emerged naturally from the research into body, walking, and landscape. Some of the list's intentions have been met through unexpected routes, which feels true to how the practice tends to move.
The question of how the work communicates with an audience, which ran through several points in the feedback, has also developed in ways I had not anticipated at the time. Thinking about installation and presentation over the course of this unit has led to a set of ideas for a solo show that I want to aim for between the end of the MA and the start of a PhD. I have written about this separately, but the central questions are ones the feedback was already gesturing towards: what happens when work is encountered without language to frame it, and what does an audience bring to that experience that the artist cannot predict or control.
What I Have Set Aside.
I have not made oak gall ink. I have not worked directly onto a sliced branch. I have not experimented with collaborative printmaking or thought seriously about installation beyond the ideas currently taking shape around the solo show. Some of this is a practical question of time and energy, which is always a factor when making alongside chronic illness, and some of it is simply a question of priority. These feel like directions that belong to a future phase of the practice rather than the conclusion of this one.
Jonathan's comment about the list sustaining a lifetime of practice has, in a way, given me permission to be selective. I do not have to do all of it now, and holding that possibility feels generative rather than like a failure to follow through.
Where things stand.
The questions that feel most alive as I approach the Unit 3 submission are ones that were already present at Unit 2, but have become clearer in the months since. What does survival look like when restoration is not possible? How can material and place speak without needing to be resolved into language? Where does masking appear in the work, and when is it protective rather than limiting?
I have not answered these questions, but I have learned to sit with them more comfortably, and to trust that staying with them is part of what the practice is doing. That feels like enough for now, and like a reasonable place from which to begin thinking about what comes next.
