Abstract
This PhD by Publication and Creative Practice critically appraises a consistent body of practice-led and practice-based research (Candy 2006). The thesis focuses on five distinct but overlapping bodies of drawings and accompanying published writing, produced from 2008 onwards, leading to new knowledge about practice and an understanding of the outcomes through drawn artefacts that result from practice. The research asks how drawing as mindfulness and mindfulness as drawing can lead to an awareness of the singularity of the present moment through organisational drawing methods that may impact wellbeing. It surveys bodies of drawings to examine the relationship between the manual repetition of single points or lines to organisational drawing systems and how a mindful activity might result in a mindful artefact. Consequently, making original drawings is at the core of the research argument, understood as an organised, meditative, tactile, perceptual process.In the Introduction and Chapter 1, I summarise key points in my artistic practice before turning to drawing as practice-led/based research, showing the significance that the shift in materials, methods, and theoretical contexts had on me as a practitioner-researcher. I set out the importance of studio enquiry as a site for ‘reflexive practice’ (Bolt, 2007, p. 29) within which a symbiotic relationship between practice and theory is enacted, melding contemporary drawing, constructed and systems art with phenomenology, pragmatism, Eastern aesthetics and secular mindfulness. In Chapters 2 to 6, I articulate how I developed an approach to
drawing as mindful engagement through methodical compositional strategies, utilising a grid, geometries, and numerical ordering alongside slow, reductive, and repetitive tactile mark-making. These strategies activated an intimate relationship between hand and eye, mind and body, resulting in a heightened conception of time taken, bodily rhythm, and the alignment of drawing with my breathing. Each body of drawings represents a search for a perceptual sensorial engagement that facilitates meditative making and looking.
Through this thesis, I demonstrate that I have cultivated drawing methods, produced bodies of drawings, and evaluated and theorised the research through published texts. In this period, I have formulated a coherent correlation between pre-determined organisational drawing methods, the repetition of the hand-drawn markallied with the bodily regularity of each inhalation and exhalation of breath and how this leads to the singularity of present moment awareness.
Date of Award | Nov 2025 |
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Original language | English |
Awarding Institution |
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Supervisor | Philippa Lyon (Supervisor) |