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‘Seer’ and ‘Seen’: an investigation of the ‘lived experience’ of drawing, ideation and praxis
Dissertation   Open access

‘Seer’ and ‘Seen’: an investigation of the ‘lived experience’ of drawing, ideation and praxis

Alexandra Ashton
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Doctor of Creative Arts, University of the Sunshine Coast
2017
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25907/00629
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Abstract

practice-based research phenomenology drawing
This study evolved from a need, as practitioner and teacher, to understand the foundations of my drawing practice. It examines a series of questions including what, how and why do I draw? Throughout the enquiry I sought to understand the nature of drawing practice and how the strands of thinking and making contained within drawing intersect. The research project considers how drawing, operating as knowledge and experience, represents a particular way of coming to know the world. This is reflected in an overarching question: What is the relationship between experience and its interpretation through drawing? The study examines drawing in the landscape and the studio through a series of drawing cycles which relate to particular landscapes in Europe and Australia. The research questions were examined through three cycles of enquiry which built on prior findings as the project progressed. The study draws on phenomenology, and particularly the writings of Merleau-Ponty, to examine shifts that occur between drawings in-situ and their interpretation in the studio, in order to reflect the memory and experience of particular landscapes. Merleau-Ponty's (1964a) notion of the 'Seer' and 'Seen' was employed to balance the subjective viewpoint of the artist with the objective stance of the researcher. Drawing was used as a research methodology in order to consider creative outputs that were both descriptive and interpretive. A variety of methods, emanating from personal practice, were used to gain an understanding of my drawing practice from different perspectives. These included descriptive and reflective writing, descriptive and interpretive drawings, photographs, video and audio. The research contributes to understandings of the complex ways that the lived experience of the landscape influences and informs drawing activity. The iterations of the research cycle revealed that as my drawings moved from description to interpretation a phase of 're-drawing' occurred which conjoined the immersed experience of the landscape and drawing activity. The process of re-drawing bridged the gap between in situ and the studio and synthesised experiences which led to an understanding of differing modes of thinking within drawing practice. My experience was mediated through processes that I have termed noticing, awareness and consciousness. These modes of thinking are manifest in the creative outcomes and reveal glimpses of the artist's experiential world, contributing to wider understandings of the nature of ideation and praxis in the domain of drawing.

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