Yawn, Stretch

I haven’t so much as thought about the MA since the end of last term and such has been my visceral need to have nothing to do with this postgraduate sufferance that I have taken all of July and August to myself without so much as a cursory peek over my shoulder. I have been locked out of my UAL Outlook account and I haven’t even tried to solve the issue. I have baked with my kids, sat on a beach in Cornwall and watched the Compass jellyfish bob about, seen family and friends, slept with the children in a tent in the garden, learned to barbeque pizza, made a camp fire and toasted marshmallows under the stars, planted 300 seedballs and 80 spring bulbs, made cheesy greeting card watercolours of flowers on the kitchen table with my girls, drank all the wine and laughed all the laughs. The house is being renovated so the soundtrack to the Summer has been a jackhammer and I have newly renovated bathrooms that I have lovingly painted and restored myself and hopefully there will be two new bedrooms to paint, decorate and then enjoy once the roof has been reattached and 70 years of chimney soot has been cleaned off every surface. The end of term felt a bit burn-outy for my liking and I confess to dreading the second year to the point of physical discomfort. But it has to be done and I think I know what I am going to do.

Neither artist has replied to my requests for interviews for the Research Paper and I haven’t done anything about it whilst waiting. I have a month to go until the next draft so at some point soon I will have to ignite the midnight oil and shake the dust off the feather quill. It will be no small feat but I hope I prepared enough last year to pull it out of the academic bag. I have lost interest in truth - reading on the subject feels like chewing on cardboard - and I will not pursue the PhD proposal for at least some time either. It’s been too tiring for too little gain. I have rarely felt so little zest for art making and such little self confidence in my making and academic abilities so I think I will just hold my breath until June and make the best of it. I can teach myself a lot in a year and I look forward to being post-postgraduate.

I am interested in fungi and I would like to continue with this as the focus of my studies. Fungi in the compost heap and difficult question of re-greening the planet, basically. Drawings, paper making, 3D, I even saw something about musical mushrooms somewhere.

Painting, my beloved painting. I will continue with my painting alongside it all because the painting makes me more happy than the MA makes me unhappy so on balance there are a few smiles in small change once the books have settled up.

Below the Compass Jellies off my parents’ beach on the Fowey Estuary that make life truly worth living.