Submitted January 23, 2017 via GradBook
Name: Robyn Thomas
Title: Playing Painting Personas
Application for: MPH
DoS: Andrew Cooks, PhD
2nd: Professor Dr. Roberta Mock
DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT (ABSTRACT)
This artistic research project examines the multifacetedness of identity through the objects and acts of painting. It seeks to enhance paintings as metaphors of identity by establishing a playful incorporation of personas in the studio practice for the questioning and contextualization of identity to address what their impact is on the form, content and daily practice of painting and establishing a novel approach for the questioning and contextualization of identity through painting. The objective of this project is to reveal what knowledge of identity might be gained and communicated by this painter through an atypical, analytical approach in the studio; and by studying why painters seldom incorporate personas and suggesting how they might employ such personas using tools and methods from other creative fields to add a variety of perspectives while maintaining a consistent artistic identity. The potential benefit of this knowledge to a painter’s practice is an increased awareness of seeing the work as both subject and object by becoming more deeply embedded in the artist-object-spectator relationship modelled by philosopher Richard Wollheim (1984).
My self-reflective methodology is informed by a variety of methodologies incorporating “reflection-in-action” defined by Donald Schön (1983) and developmental psychology’s concepts of play. Underlying this are my decades-long practice of painting and, for this project, more recent and developed addition of painting in collaboration with and on behalf of personas alternative to my own developed as an outcome of my studio practice. Together with these my methodology is further informed by identifying and examining the practices of visual and performance- based artists, writers and figures of popular culture who have worked with or explored a variety of alternative forms of identity and personas, such as alter egos, pseudonyms, noms de plumes and heteronyms, to address the use of such personas within my own artistic painting practice.
RESEARCH TRAINING
Research Training Induction date:
27 July 2016
Plymouth University Research Training Induction Seminar with Dr. Sarah Bennett and Dr. Anya Lewin
Other Research Training to date:
25 July 2016
THOMAS, R._Revised FINAL Draft RDC1_Form _ JAN 20 2017
Transart Institute Orientation with Andrew Cooks, PhD and Cella, MFA; Plymouth University Libraries Orientation with Amanda Russell
26 July 2016
Research Enrichment: “Documentation” with Merete Röstad
27 July 2016
Research Enrichment: “Articulation” with Dr. Geoff Cox
28 July 2016
Research Enrichment: “Intro to the PhD Viva Voce Examination” with Dr. Simon Pope
1-3 August 2016
Workshop: “Subjectivity and the Mirror: Framing the Self” with Dr. Ruth Novaczek
9-11 August 2016
Workshop: “Tools of Engaging Conflict” with Dorit Cypis
Areas of Future Training: TBD