And as i'm writing down the books and films and web pages i've come across, i see how good it is to have it recorded. In my head, as i note down The River which i watched right at the beginning of the term as a window into India, i am taken back to early 1950's India. I remember that the film gave me my starting colour palette. The River is filmed in Technicolour. It gave me sounds and images and a way into India. And the extras to the DVD were documentary films from the late 19th century through to the early 40's which let me see India as a colonised country through a very English lens. The documentaries made me realise that my not having lived or visited India was less of a problem than i thought maybe because nobody knows the life of another, the India of the Mughals was not the same as the India that was held by the British Empire which was not the same as the India of the 1950's that i was looking at through Alan Ginsberg's eyes and mind, or the India that friends spoke of or the India in my mind that comes from 30 years of yoga & meditation or the India of the Ramayana which is the seed point for all my work this term. It made me think that a man/woman cannot live in another's skin but through imagination we can gain some insight and that art and writing may offer passage to the being of another.
The man who did the cinematography for The River was Jack Cardiff. He also shot Black Narcissus and one of the documentaries which led me to look for more by him on youtube and it was from watching one of those, Temples of India, that i began to think of columns and stories carved onto columns, because learning how to tell stories is another aspiration i have come to university to learn. 
Thinking about columns made me put a long sheet of lining paper up on my studio space wall that i could start to scribble on , first with water soluble graphite pencil, then glue (uhu), then paint, then varnish, and more paint, and more varnish (some with sand mixed in), and collage, and more paint and so on. It ended up a big ugly mess but it didn't, it doesn't, matter because doing it made me think of stories and how they layer up and change and how bits get missed out and bits get added on and who knows what the story started out like at the beginning and maybe it doesn't matter. And all that connected to my reading and watching half a dozen retellings of the Ramayana, all of which have key connecting points and characters but all of which have varied here and there. And from painting, the ugly painting, i then was inspired to draw some of what i was thinking about on the back of secondhand copper etching plates and one was the column in my head with a turtle which is one of the incarnations of Vishnu who also incarnated into Rama to save the world from Ravana. And some of this i know from reading the Ramayana over and over again, and some of it i know from reading Ritual Art of India by Ajit Mookerjee which was a brilliant introduction to Indian culture along with Tantra Art also by Ajit Mookerjee which i'll confess i've still only just dipped into and also Tantra Song by Franck Andre Jamme which i've also only just browsed. Because time, time, runs away with itself.
At the beginning of my MA i felt like a snow globe that had been shaken up, forgive me if i'm repeating myself, it was an overwhelming impression. Now i'm aware of how i have had to keep my foot down on the accelerator pedal just to achieve the little i've achieved. Sometimes i think i've achieved a lot and then other times i think how so much time has passed and still i'm only just beginning and haven't made any work that is more than a scribbled idea. If i get another lifetime as an artist i'll try to get cracking sooner. i wish i had learned to print at 18 or 19. But i didn't so that's life and i guess it's better late than never. 
This term i've been learning inks and papers and process. I've tried sugar lift as a way of making a mark on an etching plate and next week i'll try at least one other way. And i've tried using more than one ink on a plate because one of the 2nd year students i chat to was doing it and so i asked Jess, the technician, and so i've begun and can now plan to do that if i'm thinking about what to make and i know that it's called a la poupe. And next week i'll maybe try chine colle which will add a collaging element to my printmaking. I must read more about it before trying. 
In the screen print room i have learned how the tables work. And in theory how to register the print with tabs of masking tape. I need to try other papers for screen printing and to think in layers of image and how to be more careful with my lines so that i get the picture i want at the end. My first screen printing was really just learning the basics, how to mix inks, the manners of the print studio, how to be part of the space, how to be competent at the process not worrying too much about the work i was producing. My second screen was full of itsy bits that then took ages to print and so i tried to make a three layer print which felt like new learning, and was, but i rushed the lines i drew and so the finished picture is clumsy, so next term i will try again in the hope that i can make something i'm more satisfied with. 
I'm going to stop soon but i just want to add into this blog post that after feeling disheartened by my tutorial the week before i raised my sadness with my tutor and he was lovely. I realised that his job is not to pat me on the head and say very good but to get me to learn as much as i can while i'm on my MA, that that is some of what i am paying for, a critical eye, and tho it is uncomfortable sometimes it has to be that way. If learning was all easy it would be less precious, less hard won. Those are my thoughts not thoughts he put into my head except perhaps by being my teacher and pushing me to be my best.  
Later in the day after i'd spoken to him, we had a group crit with most of the full-time MA fine art students and we looked at everybody's work and the teachers talked about it and asked questions and it was so interesting to see and learn about fellow students work and process. At the end Desmond aka Mr Desmond said that all of us need to look at more modern contemporary artists and the idea of a dream exhibition was also mooted as we fell a little short on our knowledge of contemporary artists who weren't ourselves. I think looking at and seeing others, other's work, other's lives, is a way to avoid becoming too narcissistic and self absorbed.
I love the idea of a dream exhibition and i've been mulling over who i would have in mine. Who would you have if you could have any half a dozen artists, some living, some dead ? It has got me pouring over books and the internet to see who inspires me and made me ask who i am making work for apart from myself, what context do i see myself in, why am i doing fine art instead of illustration or creative writing if story telling is what i am interested in. I have discovered Kiki Smith and Laura Owens as a result of my search.