Critical Autobiography and Painting Practice

In 2000 I completed a PhD in Creative practice (painting) which had a
contextualising thesis as part of the submission. My paintings at this time were
based upon issues of memory and the text presented a narrative of the
construction of the work but also examined how I was constructed by the work
(both through the painting and writing). The tension between the past and what
we make of it was central to my argument about the creative self in painting
and so the title of this conference is very apt to the issues I was (and still am)
dealing with both in my painting and writing. This writing also arose out of a
feminist desire to unearth, in the words of Janet Wolff, ‘buried selves’ and to
render visible the threads which connect experience and biography with
intellectual work (Wolff, 1994, p.15).
In this paper I will seek to address what theoretical and methodological
issues I adopted in my Creative Practice PhD. In my thesis I established a
triangulated research model of Self/Painting Practice/Social Practice. The first
part of this paper will set out the model and the second part will develop it in
relation to the production, intentions and form of the paintings themselves. A
version of this paper was published in the Journal of Visual Art Practice Vol.1,
No.3.