Soon after completing a part-time MA (1993-1995), my course-leader suggested I consider a practice-based visual research PhD. I went to a handful of early meetings as an observer, and truly wished to embrace further critically engaged practice discussion, dialogue and debate. But with no financial support and being wholly responsible for young mouths to feed and a roof to keep over our heads, my graphic design work (well paid and regular), was the only practical choice I appeared to have. A freelance career meant I was able to work from home, work around school pick-up time, and get paid well enough to cover outgoings.

Back then, being a parent, especially being a mother, denied opportunity in the arts. Being a parent who had to make a living made it almost impossible to rely on: the sale of art? Winning Open Submission Competitions? Applying for Residencies? These are seemingly impossible when you don’t have a well-paid, supportive partner or wealthy parents/patrons. Twenty+ years disappeared before the opportunity to even have the time to paint again arose.

The PhD had to wait until I ceased to have the responsibility of dependents (or won the Lotto). The delay meant hatching a practice-led research plan while doing the chores, or driving, or when I should have been concentrating on work-work. The project I began to consider absorbed and engaged for years – ideas floated around my head; were chatted about, and notebooks filled with diagrams and lists… Ideas for an ambitious, audio/visual labour of love. Ideas had to remain at arms length, so were kept in a sort of peripheral space, in the corner of my eye, tucked aside but always present – I knew I could start once the children were through school and the mortgage was paid off*. I remained in the liminal state between the defined areas of now and then, without belonging to either of them. I remained in the threshold area of possibility.

The notebook notes (summarised):

Projects are naturally, intuitively and instinctively ‘series’ led. There is a pattern in the work process; every decision and discovery leads into and influences the next. The series allows a flow of ideas; a journey from one image or idea to the next allowing the brain to concoct a narrative and collect evidence for an investigation. Even a flitting process relates (often with hindsight), to the momentary journey the eye takes between seeing one thing and the next – a beginning (or first stage of a process) leaps to the next.

Self-initiated schemas gave me a diagrammatical device for placing ideas in rows and columns – order out of flitting chaos. The compulsion to work on these ‘anticipated projects’ was an attempt to understand where I belonged – the purpose for a continual investigative practice. I saw all activity as equal; that the subtlest or briefest look at one image; a momentary or fleeting peripheral glance at the next; a studied and patient stare, should attempt, or should at least be as capable of, finding the evidence necessary to understand (in the long run) what the investigation might be.

*As it turned out, even with the mortgage paid off, and children finishing school, I had to experience another significant change in my circumstances before being free to work. Note to others: if a relationship makes you small, rage against it. Be celebrated and flourish.