Research
Research interests
- Painting
- Speculative writing
- Cognitive Philosophy
- Neuroaethetics
Current research
Core research practice engages a dialogue between painting, philosophy, and cognitive science to map and explore the anatomy of meaning/sense-making through the materiality of a painting practice. Through cross-disciplinary dialogue, the practice explores and responds to particular concerns integral to theories of perception, specifically blending theory, extended mind theory, cognitive and embodied ideas – within the tradition of painting. The work seeks to situate how an artist might contribute through material practice to the broader philosophical and experiential vocabularies that view the mental and the physical as discrete domains. Some of this is grounded in the humanist compulsion to figure, contain, measure and bring to human scale - and the ultimate impossibility and fallibility of this compulsion.
At the heart of the research practice is a focus on ideas around optical awareness, engaging a lexicon of visual and bodily experiences around how we come to see and understand the material. The approach is contextualized within a critical theoretical framework engaging visual/image making, speculative/experimental writing, and post-medium painting practice.
Within a broader field, the research practice sits within the dialogue between in Art & Science located in a network within Philosophy, Painting and Experimental Neuroaesthetics. With the support of the AHRC, dialogues and collaborations have engaged the Department of Brain Science at Imperial College and the Center for the Study of the Senses (CenSes) at UoL to generate scholarship around visual perception. Across various projects, core interests include how the relationship of text and image sits within alternative models/presentations of learning, practice, and research in order to situate ideas not only within scholarship, but in how that scholarship is transmitted effectively.