Intellect

Authors:  Anne Robinson 
DOI: 10.1386/jvap.8.1and2.59_1

Keywords
artists' writings, practice-based research, tacit knowledge, visual intelligence, painting, process

Abstract
Why do visual artists write? What does it mean to be a contemporary artist engaged in practice-based research? This article is an artist's response to the task of making a body of visual artwork that constitutes research in the contemporary academic context. I am exploring how written language may form part of this and responding to current debates about the possibility of a ‘new’ kind of knowledge emerging from studio/art practice that can be considered alongside conventional academic research methodologies. I set out to gain a deeper understanding of artists' writings and interrogate their functions and affect in a range of contexts, alongside my own practice. I have focused on a period spent in the studio making a series of works based on the same frame, re-filmed, from the feature film The Cruel Sea and the use of a written studio log to document the process, but not necessarily ‘anchor’ It. The log works as a map or navigation tool pointing towards the next question. In the text, reflections on artists' writings intersect with textual and visual extracts from the log itself.