Sophie Ashdown

This week’s Tuesday session was a tale of two halves. The first half was about meeting people and the second half focused further on how we feel and think about our practice, and how we can demonstrate our reflection through the blog and other means.

Learning more about some of my new course-mates was really fascinating. I loved hearing about each person’s personal journeys and looking at examples of their work.

I loved Siobhan’s ink drawings, mostly of Scottish landscapes. Having just been working on an ink drawing myself, I was particularly interested in her technique and asked about what tools she used. She uses fine brushes with liquid ink whereas I was using an ink pen, so now I am thinking about how I could try using a brush instead for another piece of work.

Susan does beautiful work based on old photos, in a “paint by numbers” style which is so effective. The colours and shapes make the image slightly distorted especially when close up, but pull back and the method gives the images a much more lively and ethereal effect. And they pieces are HUGE! I would love to see one for real.

I was lucky at last week’s session to chat to Alex in a one-to-one breakout room, so I already knew a little bit about her horses but it was amazing to hear more about her process and how she has developed over time. I was amazed to see the metal moose that is apparently in a country estate somewhere. I had no idea that she did such massive pieces of metal sculpture. It was very impressive.

Nicola makes an array of intriguing pieces, that are all tied together through her own experience and experimentation. I feel like she has so many ideas in her mind so I look forward to seeing what she creates over the next two years.

Denisa’s atmospheric photography was a real surprise to me. She captures moments and feelings in each image. Jonathan said he could “smell” the settings in the photos and I understand what he means. There was one photo showing the light coming through a window at the foot of a bed, which when described does not sound like an obvious subject for a photo but there was something fascinating about it.

Rachel clearly has a wealth of professional experience that has afforded her the chance to work on some really interesting creative projects. The four-colour piece for Johnnie Walker made so much more sense when it was explained, and i saw the reasoning and meaning much more behind it. I’m interested to see how Rachel develops her aims to combine living experience (sight, sound, smell, etc) to create new works of art.

I loved Karema’s concept of “social sculpture” where she has a group of people creating pieces that all work together to form a cohesive piece of art comprising all of the different works created by the group. The subject of the Sykes-Picot agreement inspired some conversation and I have since looked up more information about it. How fascinating that Karema’s work influenced us all to know more about this topic!

Rebecca’s work drew my eye immediately, because I see all of the intricate patterns in her work. Her personal stories about how her works reflect her life and experiences were fascinating.

Cheng’s work struck me visually in how she presented her perspective. The piece that had me hooked was the arm cuff. I must find out how she made it and what it is made out of as it is quite beautiful. It reminds me of the intricate silverwork of the elves in Lord of the Rings!

There is something both mesmerising and haunting about Dalal’s work. Her colour palette, the facial expressions, and the scenarios all combine to make a slightly other-worldly experience. Learning more about her inspiration was fascinating.

So that was the first half of the group that presented about their work. During the session I was both hoping and dreading (in equal measure!) that I would be next. I hope that next week I can represent myself well to everyone. It is sometimes hard to explain why I paint in patterns but I hope that I can convey myself well next week.

The second half of the session was about reflection, and encouraging us to reflect out loud to others, in person and via the blog.

I was lucky to be in a breakout group with Karema, Cat, and Donald. We answered these questions:

1. What have I done this past week?
2. What am I planning to do this week?

We had some great discussions about what we have been up to. Everyone talked about setting up our blogs and starting to get into writing them.

I talked about the cottage drawing that I’ve been working on and that I hope to finish it this week.

It was useful to discuss our plans with everyone as I believe we shared our true thoughts and asked each other some good questions.

Back in the main group we each noted three words to describe how we feel at this stage of the course, and wrote them on the studio wall. My three were:

1. Excited
2. Inspired
3. Enthused

As it turned out, quite a few other people had similar words to mine. Looking back on it now, I wonder what else I could have said. Certainly the above three descriptions are correct, but I think there are others that don’t all necessarily fit into one word:

• Fascinated by everyone else’s work and personal stories
• Apprehensive about what comes next
• Partly intimidated by the quality of other’s work
• Overly keen (doh!)
• Somewhat confused about what exactly I’m supposed to be doing(!)
• Determined to figure everything out
• Proud to be on this course and a member of this group
• Hopeful to make some new friends

A task for this next week is to contribute to the Studio wall to answer “How do you respond to the encouragement to be surprised, puzzled and confused?” I am taking some time to think about this one. Thankfully I attended (virtually) Jonathan’s session on Wednesday about “messy introduction to research methodologies” so hopefully I can use that insight to help answer the question.

This course is really forcing my brain to think in different ways, and express how I’m thinking and feeling in far more detail than I’m used to. It will take some getting used to but I’m working on it.