Booklist

The Object Stares Back

James Elkins

1997

Harvest Books

ISBN 9780156004978

This must be my favourite art book, which I reread every couple of years. It is a thoughtful essay, a personal insight into art, vision and human perception.

The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine

Rozika Parker

1989

Routledge

ISBN 9780415902069

This book was quite a revelation to me. I read it before I thought of studying Fine Art, and I was already obsessed with making, textiles, woodwork and museum embroidery. It uncovers the reality of women’s’ lives and art as part of a continuum.

On Photography

Susan Sontag

1997

Penguin

ISBN 9780141187167

Essays on photography about the evidential nature of time. What photographs show us about the world and how we think.

Camera Lucida

Roland Barthes

1980

Vintage

ISBN 9780099225416

This is a personal essay about the nature of photography, time, the past and our relationship with image. Moving and personal, I’d say it formed much of my thinking about the meaning of photography, especially in my degree dissertation which was about the reality of photography in terms of science, image and philosophy, based on a personal family photograph.

In Praise of Shadows

Junichiro Tanizaki

1933

Vintage

ISBN 9780099283577

  

A gently insightful essay on aesthetics. Delightful meditation on mindfulness in art.

  

A Room of One’s Own

Virginia Wolf

1929

Penguin

ISBN 9780156787338

Written almost a century ago, and still as relevant. I am not now a single parent, but I am still a mother, and have spent years pursuing art, writing and study within family life. The importance of the allowing the creative life space, time and resources to flourish.

  

Novels

What I Loved

Siri Hustvedt

2003

Hodder and Stoughton

ISBN 9780340830727

Really intelligent novel about relationships. Some characters are artists and critics, and talk deeply about art in the way real involved intellectuals do. Art is integral to the plot – the novel changes in an unexpected way further on, almost casting a shadow backwards.

Invisible Cities

Italo Calvino

1974

Picador

ISBN 9780330257312

Full of ideas and imagery, Invisible Cities is quite a marvel and an inspiration in allowing the imagination to flourish. A series of psychological states, metaphors, imagined cities.

Science

The Little Book of Science

John Gribbon

1999

Penguin

ISBN 9780140280050

In this booklist I found I edited the vast possible bookshelf by choosing books I tend to return to and read anew. This slim book has a concept a page, and even though science has moved on since 1999, it is still relevant. No matter how many times I read these summings-up of gravity, or string theory, I can never quite grasp them, and often take this book with me when travelling, to continue to boggle the mind and get me thinking.

definitions

Words that I didn't really know what they mean, or couldn't define if asked.


Dialectic - argument for solving disagreement, dialogue between two with different points of view, to come to a reasoned truth of the matter. Differs from debate in that there each side is committed to their point and one side wins.

Abstract - short statement containing key information about the full paper or conference presentation.

Schema. A cluster of preconceived ideas or thoughts which represent a view of the world, a group, a person. 

Epistemologist. Specialist in the branch of philosophy which studies the nature of knowledge and truth. Unrelated to critical thinking which is more allied to systems and methods. Epistemology investigates the origins and and limits of knowledge. 

Heuristic solutions are those such as an educated guess or intuitive judgement, finding a quick, experienced-based solution.

Phenomenographic - a research approach which examines the relationships between study and understanding, thinking and learning, especially within education. It explores how people experience and learn.

Exegesis - a critical explanation or interpretation of a text.

Iterations – a design term, repeating process in stages, observing and reflecting. In my art work I think of this as dress rehearsals or mock-ups. Sometimes you have to pull things together to see if they will work as a whole before finalising component parts.

Imaginal – lovely new word to me. Apart from meaning referring to the imagination, there are links in this word to metaphysical realms, and a newer branch of psychology which is to do with the soul, and what images reveal and speak of the soul. 

Reflexivity is the circular relationship between cause and effect, each affecting the other.

Quotidian - the everyday, the ordinary, as opposed to Quiddity, the essence or whatness of a thing.

Palimpsest - a manuscript page from which the writing has been scraper off and the page used again.


Liminal - a sensory threshold, in an intermediate state, in between life and death

Limbic - the Limbic system is a complex set of brain structures, controlling the emotions, behaviour, motivations and memory.