[LAUIL603] Studio Brief 2: Final Reflective Report

I am incredibly satisfied with the final content of my digital publication and how I have married together analog abstract expressionist paintings with poetry and personal photographs from an incredibly difficult time period in my life to reframe and educate. I have given consideration to the pacing of the publication and the content through the page spreads so that each turn of the page has a variation in information and content, with single and double page spreads of photos, paintings, and text. This shows regard for visual interest and for engaging with the audience.

This project has allowed me to reflect more deeply on a highly traumatic and isolating experience, of four major surgeries, to acknowledge what happened rather than ignoring it, and to find the courage to unpick a deeper meaning in it in order to educate others about what it means to be blind and experience the world through a blind lens. What did I go through in my blindness journey? What can I see? What am I still capable of? The documentation process, through a personal lens of poetry and a social media lens of selfies and statuses, provides further personal significance.

The digital publication and website were carefully selected to ensure both were the right format and platform to showcase my work. The aspect of a trigger warning, at the forefront of the publication, was of great importance due to the nature of the content and my ethos as a professional artist. While my work is extremely vulnerable and honest, and there is great significant value and therefor authenticity in what I create, I want to ensure the audience is comfortable with that and has consented past a threshold in order to view my recovery images.

I researched into wider disabled artists, and scoped into blind artists, but found there is a lack of representation as there is in wider society. Contemporary abstract expressionism informed my project by analysing the canvas paintings of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning - and specifically choosing to observe the work of female painters who are largely ignored in the art world - such as Joan Mitchell, Perle Fine, and Judith Goodwin. Looking at what other women have done before with their canvases, who have higher levels of vision, inspired me to think beyond this and consider what I can do with my level of vision. How can I paint and convey blindness through texture and three dimensional mark-making?

Project management has helped to realise my targets by creating daily to-do lists and a weekly goal of creating at least 2 canvas paintings. This has helped me to stay on track, mental health and personal circumstances permitting, and produce a steady flow of compositions to choose from for the publication.

I would perhaps add more of the social media angle if I were to do the project again as I lived through my recovery on Instagram. I was very alone and isolated in Leeds, so shared everything with an online community of friends and documented my journey. I screen-shotted the Instagram page but does this add an element of inconsistency within the booklet? I also had personal updates in Instagram captions which could perhaps been implemented as their own pages in the publication. I would also have liked to consider a more multimedia approach with video and audio combined. Recorded audio poetry and thoughts would work well to amplify the personal angle and these features are available on platforms such as Joomag.

Exploring creative concerns and problem solving in a professional way, with the trigger warning for example, have improved my skills during this project. Identifying a digital publication as the most appropriate response to my canvas paintings and selecting the most suitable site also improved me skills, as well as giving consideration for spreads and content for a publication.

I faced personal problems during this module with my Guide Dog being absent while she recovered from surgery. My mental health suffered as a result and I was only interesting in creating the paintings for a long time to help employ an 'art as therapy' approach to healing myself. Once my Guide Dog returned, I and was able to make a start on the publication, the creative concerns, the reflective process, and my other modules on the course. 

 Issuu no longer being an option threw a spanner in the works but I discovered Joomag after some research. Adobe Acrobat had a tendency to slightly rotate some of my images when I created a PDF to then upload online. It was frustrating to have to go back through some of the pages and 'place' the image on top to fix it. Technology can be a wonderful thing but also creates its own issues for no particular reason that need fixing which greatly wastes time.

[Here is an example. Adobe Acrobat automatically "enhanced" and formatted  each page as I scrolled through each one to double check they were in order - which would sometimes rotate an image or painting for some reason. I would try to rotate it back but it was a confusing process which would sometimes stretch the original proportions. It creates a small gap/white border where it moved from the page and looks unprofessional. The example here is very minor. The paintings that were rotated 20° or so, I had to replace.]

My way of creating content - combining poetry and abstract canvas paintings, with self publishing online in an immediate and accessible way - greatly excites me and I'd like to explore this more after graduation. There is a lack of blind artists creating valuable and compelling work and this is a gap that I am eager to explore. I have identified in my Professional Practice module that Id like to undertake an MA in Fine Art. I would like to explore further the aspects of painting as a blind artist and how that informs my mark-making and textural responses to surface quality and tactility.