The first semester was taken up largely with the dissertation - mine was entitled Fairytales, Fine Art and Feminism, and that's broadly the area of my artistic pracice at the moment as well.
When I first enrolled I imagined I'd be concentating on printmaking - and I did work on my ideas for alternative endings for fairytales, for a bit - but then I got side tracked by all the interesting stuff I was looking at for my dissertation. The great thing about being part-time is that I have time to play and experiment with mediums that are unfamilir to me, like ceramics. I've just had an assessment and, so far, my tutors are OK with me exploring a range of ideas and I'm really enjoying it. My fellow students are very supportive and I'm learning a lot from them. I rather think they regard me as 'the eccentic old woman who makes weird dolls', but that's OK, they're a nice bunch (and I'm not the only oldie).
Below are a few of my sketches and ideas for prints for the as yet unfinshed Alternative Endings series. I got the original idea from some cards I bought of a woman dancing with crocodiles.
In the next few posts I'll get you up to date on what I've been making, drawing, painting, printing...
