Reflection on Feedback from Assignment 4

I received the feedback for this assignment at the beginning of December, but at the time I was embroiled in completing Assignment 4 for my Contextual Studies module and then Christmas and New Year festivities intervened.  It is now time to get back to work!

I was pleased and encouraged by this feedback - plenty of positives and good suggestions for taking the work forward.

You're sharing the work widely and absorbing everything you can.  It's shaping up Mike.

Rob also commented that my research and study visit work were excellent - encouraging.  He suggested that I shouldn't overload myself at this point and that I need to assimilate what I have taken in.  With this I concur!  I do have a couple of books that I have read to blog, though.  Interestingly the other day someone was asking me about my work and I was able to talk about it logically and coherently, explaining how the BOW and CS essay are linked.  As Rob mentions I think that this has resulted from spending time absorbing and reflecting on what I have been doing over the last 2-3 weeks.

Rob felt that the images that I presented for A4 look lovely on the screen but the prints were only decent enough, suggesting that the matte paper I used, although appropriate for the quiet contemplation I was looking for, meant that perhaps they lacked clarity somewhat.  He suggested that I tried printing on lustre so I am going to print a couple on Permajet Oyster paper to compare.  I may get one or two printed commercially as well to see how that goes.

I had been thinking about making some images in frost/snow/fog, but Rob thought that maybe this could be an aesthetic crutch and pitch me back into the picturesque; something I am trying to avoid.  I have, actually made some new work since submitting the assignment and have photographed some paths/tracks made by animals - When is a path not a path?  If I use these that will give me three themes: paths with holes in the image, indefinite paths and paths that are not paths.  I think that this is probably enough and feel that I now need to edit and select images for A5.  Rob also feels that I should start to separate out the series.  Rhe question is how?

Finally he feels that I need to refine my artist statement/text to go with the work as there are perhaps still too many ideas in the mix.

All in all encouraging and plenty of food for thought.