From rupture to resonance: Uncertainty and scholarship in Fine Art research degrees

Abstract

This article focuses on the phenomenon of ‘rupture’ identified in student narratives of uncertainty and scholarship experienced during the course of Fine Art research degrees in two Australian universities. Rupture captures the phenomenon of severe disruption or discontinuity in existing knowledge and typically signifies epistemological rift for the students. On one level candidates become anxious and directionless; on another they adapt and resolve the challenges they face. All candidates enter research degrees ready to be challenged, but can soon become overwhelmed by what they perceive as chaos in their thinking, combined with organizational hurdles and, in the disciplinary area of fine art, an unfamiliar and newly evolving community of practice. They identify struggle as a crucial stage in their scholarly development, knowledge construction and the advancement of research and art making in their discipline area. This article advances a perspective on the roles of challenge and adaptivity in knowledge production that further informs the literature on the supervision needs of new researchers.

Keywords

epistemological rift fine art research higher degree researcher development

Introduction

Despite an intense interest in doctoral candidates and their supervision at university that has spanned some twenty years, there continues to be a paucity of systematic research on how doctoral candidates become researchers, and how learning actually takes place in conditions of epistemological complexity. The path to discovery in any field is uncertain and complex. Researchers consciously seek challenges and puzzles – to ‘apprehend a pattern, order, or meaning amidst an assumed absence of order and meaning’ (Neumann, 2006: 397) – and this in turn can lead to questioning the very core of one’s knowledge and skills. Cantwell et al. (2012) have noted that research students face a significant ‘metacognitive load’ when they move into research scholarship, and this is arguably further complicated in the visual arts, as a relatively new research arena, by the range of debates and the extent of uncertainty about the nature of practice-based research and research contribution.

Beliefs about what counts as knowledge are important determinants in what a discipline area ‘knows’ about its subject matter and how members respond to threats to ‘knowing’ that are central to moving a field forward. Students who enrol in research degrees in long-established research traditions, and who have already had some research experience at undergraduate level, would seem to be well-positioned to deal with the challenges to their ‘knowing’ that lie ahead, but there is ample evidence in the literature to demonstrate that doctoral work in particular is extremely challenging for most candidates and ‘dissonant’ for some (Wisker et al., 2003). Enrolling candidates in Fine Art research higher degrees, and those in the study reported here, are typically practising artists, with unique histories as exhibiting artists within their own specialist art practice or in arts administration. Identifying how they move beyond their existing knowledge and practices to develop ‘new knowing’ and then new knowledge as researchers is the primary aim of the project reported here. Specifically this article identifies sources of ‘rupture’ during candidature and how candidates respond to and resolve these. Rupture is a concept that captures the phenomenon of severe disruption or discontinuity to existing knowledge and the associated emotional response by the candidate.

Literature

Strongly held creative identities, unrealistic expectations about candidature, and underestimation of the requirements of research, can all serve to destabilize the experience of research for the newcomer to fine art research. For instance, Simmons et al. (2008) found new fine art candidates expected candidature to provide freedom and resources to expand their art making, but also that they perceived research procedures and candidature requirements as a potential limit on that freedom, including the university’s requirement that they also write and apply theory to art as research. Manathunga (2007) identified unresolved expectations as a ‘warning sign’ of students at-risk of not completing their degree (see also Gardner, 2009). Similarly, Hockey (2007) linked unrealistic or unresolved expectations with problematic transitions into scholarly practices among visual arts candidates. This can be understood as a mismatch between expectations to continue artist trajectories and the academic expectation that they, as artists, will also become scholars.

Hockey (2003) and Hockey and Allen-Collinson (2000, 2005) found art and design candidates strongly held to their creative identity at the beginning of candidature and struggled to adapt to the academic requirement to combine art making with analysis. In addition, Hockey (2007) suggested the resultant tension produces fear and anxiety that becomes a barrier to academic progress. However, the same source of tension can act as a catalyst for students to achieve authenticity and to adopt a scholarly identity (Allen-Collinson, 2005; Hockey, 2007).

Visual language, not written language, is the dominant language of artists, and several researchers draw attention to perceived incompatibilities and tensions between the two. To produce an artefact and an exegesis is explained as ‘schizophrenic’ (Kroll, 2004) or as ‘culture-shock’ (Melles, 2007; Pritchard et al., 2005). While acknowledging these tensions Hill (2010) underlines the integral place of the visual language within the visual arts doctorate and the importance of a candidate’s skills to integrate both languages. The ability of candidates to resolve struggles between art making and research and between written and visual languages is argued to be fundamental both to the transition to fine art scholarship (Allen-Collinson, 2005; Hockey, 2003), and to research practice (Macleod and Holdridge, 2005; Makela, 2007; Prentice, 2000; Pritchard et al., 2005).

Sullivan (2010) in his work to establish a foundation to art practice as research explained that a goal of practice-based research is to change the way one sees or interprets things: to create new knowledge. Sullivan and visual arts researchers more widely assert that practice-based research switches the emphasis from subjectivity within an art practice (such as self-expression or object making) to objectivity as an exercise in knowledge construction (Gray and Malins, 2004; Marshall, 2007). It is necessary that candidates move beyond their existing knowledge and practices and open the self to those processes which will result in the self coming to inhabit and know the world differently (Somerville, 2008; Wisker and Robinson, 2009; Wood, 2006).

Transformation of self was identified in research on doctoral learning by Stevens-Long et al. (2012). Drawing on transformative learning theories developed by Mezirow (1991), Mezirow and associates (2000), Cranton (2004, 2011) and others, they found transformation took the form of cognitive outcomes for candidates, as well as ‘new capacity for emotional experience and conceptions of self, and more reflective professional practice’ (Stevens-Long et al., 2012: 192). The growth and transformation of the self in response to challenge is a vital element in a theory of optimal experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Optimal experience refers to activity that is driven by challenge, intrinsically rewarding and ultimately enjoyable, but central to its achievement is a sense of control over new information (the right skills, the opportunity to concentrate, specific goals or a strong idea of what one wants to do, and rapid, pertinent feedback). Flow is a seemingly effortless but highly disciplined activity that stimulates reflection. If there is a mismatch in the conditions there can be dissonance, threat and anxiety. The premise that emotion is foundational to consciousness is echoed in the work of Neumann (2006: 383) on the topic of the scholarly work of professors. Neumann argued ‘to know is also to feel one’s own knowing’ and to ‘identify oneself as a knower’.

From the above it is clear that undertaking a research degree in fine art is unambiguously effortful, both emotionally and intellectually, and calls on self-knowledge to meet the challenges. In the literature on academic culture and scholarship a range of scholarly characteristics pertinent to research higher degrees are identified by authors. These include: adaptive skills to deal with the problematic and the unknown (Pearson and Brew, 2002); an ability to embrace challenges of open and critical inquiry and flexibility in the application of current practices (Barnett, 1997), and a capacity to generate and evaluate new knowledge, to conserve important ideas from research, and to understand the social, transformative function of knowledge as custodians within intellectual communities (Walker et al., 2008).

Within the context of academic change and an evolving fine art area of inquiry, the fine art research scholar is required to create and negotiate an emerging practice-based research discourse with subjectivity, creativity and visual language as its fundamental components. The study reported here aims to better understand fine art research candidates’ expectations of their research degree, the challenges defining their journey, pivotal ‘turning points’ in learning and recognition of changes in ‘self’, and a consciousness of how these came about. This article reports on the links between the challenges experienced and the development of scholarly identity in their discipline.

Methodology

There were two groups of research participants, recent graduates or those enrolled in doctoral or masters level fine art practice-based degrees from two Australian universities. Thirty participants were recruited, candidates at different stages of development (first phase of their study, mid phase, late stage and completion). Nineteen participants were female and seventeen were doctoral candidates or graduates. Background of participants was varied, including five who had initial degrees from other disciplines and five who were immigrants with art degrees from their country of origin. Most considered themselves to be practising artists.

Interviews were of 45–60 minutes duration, typically conversational in tone despite the existence of a guiding protocol; the emphasis was on the interviewee telling their story in their own way. The key themes of interest were: how candidates deal with challenges; their understanding of research; their experiences of supervision and feedback; knowledge of examiner requirements; and personal aspirations. Researchers probed in particular for descriptions of learning and an understanding of what was required to produce a thesis.

The interviews were fully transcribed then entered into QSR N.Vivo 7.0. The text was initially analysed by question and case features, and then explored for emergent themes. Among the strongest was a consciousness of the challenge to self. The researchers re-examined the text over a number of iterations to identify how such challenge played out and if it was resolved and how. The challenges that caused major disruption, and acknowledged destabilization to self, we categorize as ‘rupture’. When the participants report that their study had begun to ‘make sense’ we refer to this situation as one of ‘resonance’ because the circumstances as described suggest a new balance or harmony of sorts had come into play at that time.

Findings

Findings will be discussed in three sections: sources of rupture experienced by fine art candidates; ways in which candidates resolve rupture; and indictors of how fine art candidates achieve clarity and cohesion in the latter stages of their research to produce knowledge. We found that in early stages of candidature the challenge to primacy of expectation about art making was most central and raw, and that sophistication in understanding the nature of the research task, and self-knowledge about research learning, was at its height at later stages and among completed candidates.

Sources of rupture and the responses by candidates

Rupture is experienced in a strongly negative way and is in evidence in all but three of the transcripts. It was informative to note that those who did not experience the phenomenon were familiar with the research environment, for example as university staff or those with prior experience in research. The reaction associated with rupture is distress and a feeling of being disabled or shaken, and as struggling or floundering. In relation to this all of the following are mentioned singly or in combination: feelings of self-doubt, inadequacy, uncertainty, despair, dread, being under threat; lacking in confidence; feeling aimless and starved of ideas. Candidates fear criticism or being rejected and describe destabilizing behaviours such as resistance, floundering, or immobilization. Some felt a diminished capacity to maintain motivation and a greater difficulty to find validation or flow in their art making. One informant grew dissatisfied with his level of expertise, fearing he would not be able to do the research:

I felt a fear of violating the original per se, of not finding anything significant to find. Those questions loom large when you first start. In some sense, it’s got to do with the awareness of your process and being open to showing your work in progress. (Ken, PhD candidate)

Tara’s experiences of self-doubt were similarly intense:

In fact, my self-confidence took an absolute battering and I had a wall full of possible ideas written up, but I was paralysed by indecision … I tried a couple of things but that just made it worse because it compounded the whole problem. (Tara, PhD candidate)

As artists, candidates feel vulnerable; they question their existing skills, self-worth and those dimensions of self that are already validated by their professional practices. These findings are consistent with previous research of practice-based research students (Allen-Collinson, 2005; Hockey, 2003, 2007; Hockey and Allen-Collinson, 2000, 2005).

Rupture to existing knowledge can reverberate across several elements of the research task. An initial indicator of rupture is a challenge to candidates’ art practices. That is, what they already know about making art has suddenly become limiting. One candidate talks about her struggle and feeling of wrong-footedness as a precursor to finding new ways to make art within the practice-based research paradigm:

The first year was probably the toughest … I was doing a lot of experimentation and feeling like I was floundering. A lot of the time I felt as though I was an academic fraud … I did feel like giving up a number of times … I just completely lost faith in what I was doing. Every idea I came up with, I rejected. There were a number of patches like that where I felt dead and starved of ideas. (Gina, PhD graduate)

In her response to discontinuity, Gina faces self-imposed and external challenges, as she tries to find new ways to apply her art to a research environment, whereas in the following account, Cassie places a high priority on her intuition and creativity in her search for exemplars as a way out of her ‘thrashing around’:

I was thrashing around, looking at other people’s stuff to see how they had tackled it and there was such a disparity … You can seem overwhelmed by what’s needed … I found I couldn’t plan it. (Cassie, PhD candidate)

In both of these accounts, candidates struggle in search for a new space in which to create their art. Their newly acquired concepts or directions to art making led them to question the applicability of their existing techniques and technical skills. For instance, Rose discovered she needed to stretch herself technically to take her work into several new areas. She describes this as

A steep learning curve technically … working with a moving image as opposed to the still image, although that has led me into a whole new area now. But at the time, that was a challenge … and sorting through mass of information was a challenge at first. (Rose, PhD graduate)

Some found their existing technical skills had become obsolete in the practice-based research paradigm. Jayne reported that she was struggling to develop and position her feminist theoretical perspective within a context of art-making techniques:

Because I am dealing with figurative painting I’ve got to find my own way of dealing with [and] manipulating a range of very complex technical issues. In order to make the research, the thesis, more powerful, I’ve had to find greater technical facility … It’s all about allowing your technique to get up but not allowing it to dominate. (Jayne, PhD candidate)

Candidates begin to comprehend limits to their art practices when placed within a research paradigm. They discover their art-making goalposts must shift. As a consequence, they require more appropriate art practices to better suit their art when new conceptual insights and research-centred directions are sought. Their task is to determine how to make art in a new space of ‘not-knowing’ which they now occupy. To create a more relevant, research-oriented art practice successfully is a significant initial step, opening self to new possibilities and to change the way they see or interpret things (Somerville, 2008; Sullivan, 2010). Essentially, to respond to rupture means candidates engage in struggle which may take them into new epistemological or technical landscapes.

An outcome of candidates’ entry into this new landscape is their awareness of rupture when challenged to conceptualize their art as research. They find they lack certain skills, for example, the ability to interpret their art work for others. As Christina says, ‘the hardest part was talking about my own work’. Annie explains further:

It is terribly difficult to then, after making this work that is informed by your ideas and what you’ve found and how you’ve made connections and how you’ve put things together and what you’ve done with knowledge that you’ve gained, to then have to run around and explain that to someone in words is really tough work … and I keep getting told, ‘if you don’t want to do it, why are you doing a PhD?’ And probably once a week I ask myself, why am I? I’m in a bit of a shaky spot at the moment. (Annie, PhD candidate)

Once candidates acknowledge the direction of their task has changed from art making to knowledge creation, of which their art is an integral part, they find they need to develop conceptual skills equal to that task.

Perceived lack of writing skills pinpoint another source of rupture, and is one that candidates shy away from most often and for the longest periods. The initial fear is about an inability to manage the written section of the thesis. Writing difficulties range from a perceived lack of technical or conceptual skills, and not knowing where to start, through to struggling, to difficult aspects of the work, and how to connect the two languages or to write about innovation and originality in research terms.

Christina explains how she was surprised at the depth of her difficulties:

At the beginning it was very difficult because you tend to be very precious about your writing especially for art … I can’t write … But then when I actually described the artwork that was very difficult. That was the most difficult part of how you include and how you write, based on something like your artwork. I didn’t expect it to be that difficult … so I was trying to articulate some of my thoughts, because sometimes, talking to myself or just writing about my work, without other people, was very difficult. (Christina, PhD graduate)

Others explain their writing difficulties as a struggle to validate their creativity. Martine, a doctoral candidate, favours the visual as ‘very much an intuitive process’ over an intellectual framework, and yet recognizes the importance of a ‘fit’ or composite process between the visual and the written. Overall, ‘the most important thing’ was that research extended her ‘areas of interest and her art’.

At the stage at which she was interviewed Tara was experiencing a high level of discomfort with the research paradigm, which she says ‘wasn’t really designed specifically to take into account the creative arts’.

In the creative fields, your work seems to evolve almost of its own accord … One idea leads on to another, leads on to another … But there’s a point where you say, ‘but now the work is … doing something quite different’. You sort of feel like, I can’t do that: it doesn’t fit within the parameters of my research proposal and so there is that sense that you have to contain the work within that proposal and I think that can be quite a damaging thing to do. It really in a sense holds back on the possibilities for the work [to be] a research tool in itself. (Tara, PhD candidate)

Her point highlights the struggle candidates face in trying to take into account significant transition when their artworks shift to a new plane and they also realize the proposal needs to be flexible too. Tara indicates a sense of being both swept along and held back.

Another source of rupture is linked to the requirements of practice-based research itself: to construct a thesis within two languages. Part of this struggle is to confront and deal with the ways in which this research differs from conventional views of academic research. This is highlighted by Dianne, whose previous degree was in another discipline:

I don’t really quite understand what research is in a visual arts context. From a practising artist point of view, I find it really difficult to understand … if you put me in a social science situation and give me a task, then I don’t have trouble working out what research is. But in this context I find it really strange, because good art … comes from a place that nobody can really quite understand … I have to say it is still something I grapple with; nobody can ever quite tell me what research is in the context of visual arts to my satisfaction. (Dianne, MFA candidate)

To meet the challenges successfully, candidates need to establish connections between visual and written languages, subjectivity and objectivity, and creativity and intellectualism. This is in effect the ‘shifting ground’ they need to map if they are to advance their writing about art as research, to balance the written and visual elements of their thesis, and be in a position to create new knowledge. Without this resolution, any advancement in research is likely to be extremely difficult.

As Daniel recognizes:

It is a very different way of working and I’m finding it challenging and also very rewarding and interesting, because I have to rethink my whole approach to how I make the work … Because it is a challenge it is quite terrifying. There are moments when you doubt that you can actually do it, and you doubt that it’s working … [the thesis] is a bit of a shifty thing and that’s another sort of contentious area in the school of art, because … the writing and the work should not be two separate things … but the thing is that they are actually different forms … there’s things that are almost impossible to fit into the academic requirements of a paper. (Daniel, PhD candidate)

In contrast to Daniel’s understanding, Webster needs to rethink and to acclimatize not only to a new demand for rigorous analysis of his own innovative art making, but to the demands of uncertainty within his research:

The main challenge was actually during the process – trying to keep sight of what it was about because it mutated, it completely changed … I do remember actually moments of despair during those three years, and … thinking, I don’t know what this is about. I’ve really lost sight of it … Working on much of the detail that the main ideas start to shift, and that shift was the most difficult for me. (Webster, PhD graduate)

The inexorable shifts and changes that challenge one’s bearings are also highlighted by Luke:

It’s a real balancing act because there is a big difference between making art and writing philosophically … So balancing the practical component and the theoretical component is difficult because one minute you might be reading Heidegger and the next, you’ll be working with hammers and nails. [This is] the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to deal with in my life actually. As far as the arts side of things is, it’s been really tough … I’m sure doing a PhD in any area is quite different, whether you do it in engineering or medicine … but in the art field, it’s a very speculative area, and it’s pretty much a pathless land … it doesn’t have as many clear signposts within a certain discipline … The PhD has to make the extra leap to … something which is very speculative and very innovative and perhaps can even present some sort of seismic shift or radical shift within the discipline that you are working in. (Luke, PhD candidate)

An additional dimension to rupture arises from the field of fine art itself. The requirements of practice-based inquiry continue to be subjected to the field’s own adaptations which challenge conventional notions of research and knowledge construction. Some areas are more comprehensively theorized than others, as Luke found. Regardless, research demands a level of confidence from candidates to position themselves and determine how they will advance knowledge in their area. Candidates develop a new scholarly awareness, sense of balance, and capacity in response to such challenges (Barnett, 1997; Pearson and Brew, 2002).

Ways candidates resolve rupture

Candidates tend to explain their challenges as destabilizing, new and bewildering. What they are facing is a form of epistemological rift, sometimes experienced in ‘seismic’ proportions, enhanced or intensified by their own struggles. To move forward in research uncertainty is necessary and unavoidable if new knowledge is to result, but there needs to be feedback and it is in such circumstances that supervisors can act most effectively as reassuring fellow-travellers – offering a point of stability to support risk-taking and ‘play’, and helping define the terrain in a seemingly chaotic situation (Whitelock et al., 2008). Candidates need to make their transition into this new space at their own pace and through working out the best strategies for their needs because ultimately it is they who will be transformed by what they experience. As one candidate, Richard, notes:

It took me a little while to actually come to grips with this idea of research and defining research differently to what your normal development of your art practice is. From my point of view there’s two different things and once I decided that I wasn’t developing my own practice, but I was actually researching my topics, the penny dropped and my research started to go ahead. (Richard, PhD graduate)

To differentiate art-as-research from art-as-practice may be a key conceptual development to advancing practice-based research projects and a significant indicator of scholarly practice among creative art candidates. David clarifies this distinction to ascribe new knowledge to an area of inquiry rather than to an art practice. He is of the mind that it is the candidates’ responsibility to resolve their understanding of research:

I see it as a process that is about an investigation that is pushing a boundary of the field … and pushing out some sort of new knowledge, and new activity in my area, in a new way. Some people see it as new within their practice. I actually see it that it should be new within my field. I see that practice as a practice of doing, reflecting, trying to come up with other solutions, refinement, working towards other new possibilities within that … To put it into words is actually really difficult … But you go into a PhD one person and you come out another. A lot of what I learned was actually not so much about the research skills but it was around thinking skills. And I use those thinking skills on a daily basis … thinking skills, reflective skills and clarification, trying to search for what’s new, what’s innovative … it also made me very flexible. (David, PhD graduate)

A new space that was initially one of uncertainty, or of ‘not knowing’, now requires candidates to determine how to operate in that space. Candidates no longer think or behave as they have done before. To create resonance, where the multiple components of the practice-based research project can coherently form a thesis, is crucial to visual arts candidature. Gina demonstrates this ‘connectedness’ as integral to her research adding to a body of knowledge:

A lot of other disciplines don’t really see making art as research and there’s always a fight to justify that artwork can be research. I think they are incredibly interrelated … [it’s about] being able to identify where it is that you fit in and how you’re going to make an original contribution and understanding that is part of what you are doing. That’s just not making a body of work on a particular theme, but you’re adding to a particular body of knowledge in some way. (Gina, PhD graduate)

As one who has completed, Gina finds no further difficulty in understanding the place of art in research as knowledge production. Rather, she observes fine art candidates having to justify their research position due to a lack of understanding across the academy. For these candidates, it does not mean the struggle is over; rather their stories evidence new scholarly skills, such as critical thinking, adaptation, flexibility and innovation in knowledge production, to become as Walker et al. (2008) would suggest, curators within an intellectual art community.

Essential to consolidating research projects are several strategies that candidates adopt as a way of overcoming consequences associated with their struggle, including a desire to distance themselves from their research at some points, although not necessarily from their art practices. Reasons stated for this included candidates becoming directionless and experiencing long unproductive periods or insurmountable obstacles. Distancing takes two main forms: participation in extra-curricular art-making activities and exhibiting; and undertaking overseas study blocks. Clearly the individuals were still pursuing challenges, immersing themselves in something new that could be enjoyable because it was not so overwhelming.

Robyn, for example, returned to work in a contemporary art space during a particularly low period in her masters candidature because she could not get her work to say what she wanted it to say. She found this an advantage because art making in this alternative space did not have to be resolved in the way the degree did. Similarly, Meg, Martine and Gina extended their own art agendas by creating and constructing other artworks that were not part of the research for their degree. Some entered work in national annual exhibitions and art awards. Gina describes this activity as a detour around her doctoral degree, seeking something that was completely different from her PhD. She was intent on establishing her career and herself as an artist. She had patches where she wondered what direction she was to take. As a result of these extra-curricular activities she found that suddenly everything in her research began to fall into place. Gina, Cassie and Luke viewed public exhibition as a way to validate themselves as artists, or, as Richard says, his acceptance into a national sculpture prize gave him a sense of personal arrival.

Another strategy among these candidates was to break from their research project and to take time out for up to six months to study art overseas. For instance, Marni, who also sought to exhibit her work as a way of validation, studied in northern Europe with a specific professor and, as a result, found direction in her art making. Tara explains her lack of productivity for twelve months as ‘hitting a brick wall’:

I just didn’t know where to go next with the art work and over a period of time, I just became more and more confused. [Then] I had a residency in Paris … That helped break the back of it; having two months to concentrate just on my work … It seems to have made all the difference. While I was there, there was a group show [in which I participated]. It was good to have that deadline to make some work, without worrying what the work was going to be, and little by little, I realised there was a direction that the [doctoral] work could take. It was just that thing of being able to give it the time and concentrate. (Tara, PhD graduate)

Gina also talks about her lack of direction and how six months in Germany brought clarity:

In a way that was both a really good thing and a really difficult thing. I had to suspend for that time [my doctoral project] but the art work that I was exposed to and the experiences that I had helped me to reconsider a number of things and gave me a clear direction when I came back again. (Gina, PhD graduate)

Such detours around rupture bring about a different angle on the problems experienced. Candidates found they refocused: they found renewal, motivation was restored and obstacles diminished. Art careers are sustained beyond the degree; continuity in art practice is sustained. Freedom to just make art in a non-research environment may not only be beneficial to the research journey but also to the ongoing journey as artist. Here, this may be understood as a ‘return to the familiar’ where one is reassured in face of a threat from the unfamiliar. However, this appears to be a decision to aid their research, rather than to purely enhance creative identity or career.

Time, and what the candidate does with time-out, are important to understand. Time-out is not withdrawing entirely from the situation; rather it can be understood as providing continuity with the wider journey, of which the higher degree is only a part. In this sense this action may be a survival strategy, about reclaiming part of creative identity, validation, restoring self-confidence which has taken a battering. Equally it may be about needing time to consolidate and to find direction, or to see more clearly ‘from a distance’. Consistent with Allen-Collinson’s (2005: 718–719) research, these strategies involve restocking an artistic ‘repository of feelings’, or resolving a potential estrangement between scholarly and creative identities.

Moving from a state of anxiety by finding new skills to attack a task or goal is identified by Csikszentmihalyi (1990: 67–68), and it seems the candidates above managed, by bringing about a sense of control, to re-enter a state of ‘flow’ in their research as a result.

Reaching research clarity and cohesion: Creating resonance

This section examines how fine art candidates achieve clarity and cohesion across the multiple components and demands of their work to produce a thesis. Out of the challenge grows a new awareness, or sympathy with the new landscape they have come to inhabit – a ‘resonance’. Candidates identified specific points of connection when their research made sense to them. This they described in positive terms, as cohesion and clarity, connection or what ‘clicks’ compared with earlier occasions and circumstances which they termed fragmentation, uncertainty, or struggle. Although not discussed in this article, several candidates attributed a sense of direction and clarity to their decision-making and management. Their newfound confidence validated them as researchers, and independence empowered them as scholars.

Candidates found writing brought clarity. Whereas candidates initially feared or felt threatened to write about their research, or to conceptualize their art making, they attributed cohesion and clarity to their research that was gained through writing. Through struggle and uncertainty, candidates find the way to convert the two languages, of the visual and the written, into art-as-research. As Robyn says,

Things started to make sense when I started making work that was achieving my aims and objectives. And that came about as a combination of writing about it and resolving it in my writing as well as working through the process of art making. And also finding that I was resolving issues a lot quicker and a lot better and being much more critical and judgemental about my own work … but I couldn’t get a sense of my whole project until I had actually outlined it properly in my exegesis. (Robyn, MFA candidate)

Resonance between art making and research, between the visual and the written languages, between subjectivity and objectivity, is evident when fine art candidates adapt to a new research environment. Other candidates use a more effusive language to describe resonance, as ‘light bulbs that go on’, as a project ‘gels’ and so on. However, resonance comes at a specific time in the journey and towards its end, as Veronica and Rose say:

It only starts to click after you’ve done all of that research and [when] the work actually is fitting in to what you are writing … and you’ve got it all in front of you … and I’m clearer. I can push forward. (Veronica, MFA candidate)

In the first half of the project, you felt as though you were working in a fog. I had a sense of where I wanted to head, but in no way did I ever feel that I was getting there. But, the second half was immensely exciting … [when] there were definite points when things began to make sense [when] I sat back and said, ‘now I understand’. Technically, there were points where the program started to work and the images started to look good. That was incredibly exciting. In terms of my writing, there were times when, after ploughing through all of this stuff … I think I got to a point and started to understand it. Initially, I didn’t. It was just a huge leap. [Then] I could confidently say, ‘no, I don’t think this is the case’, or ‘this is the direction I want to push in’. (Rose, PhD graduate)

Breakthroughs in understanding and direction become apparent to the above-mentioned candidates only after a struggle. As Rose’s story demonstrates, integration or outcomes from the balancing act emerge only when all aspects of the research align, including art making, technical applications, writing and conceptual skills. Such clarity can be understood as practised scholarship. That is, candidates refer to a breakthrough, as a point when at last their project makes sense to them. Ken found that resonance came as a result of two breakthroughs, where he realized what his project was about. Such ‘eureka’ moments allowed him to see forward because his work was a lot more conceptually coherent and clearly defined and he could attain a wider perspective.

In contrast, David realized quite early in the research process that coherence came from clarifying his research question. He says he was totally ‘bogged down’ with his research saying

I actually walked away for a while … During that time there were a few moments, when it was ok, that’s where the real passion is, and the clarity felt like a knob crisping up thoughts and that’s what is really important … really exciting. And it was a moment of clarity in terms of the research question, the writing processes, and seeing how my practice had always been linked into some of these ideas. (David, PhD graduate)

Hilary’s account reflects her development as an independent scholar:

It was about a year before completion that things seemed to fall into place … I knew this was the point of making very clear decisions and eliminating extraneous stuff and pulling [it] together … For the exegesis, [it] was right at the end that bits and pieces got clarified … Once I had that core theoretical component there and then the visual field gradually identified, it seemed to make sense and it was then a matter of just really working through it and setting myself short-term goals … I think there is a point where one takes charge of one’s own project. [This] came out of all the work; the reading, the writing, everything that had been done towards the culmination of completion … There was the sense of, I know where I am going and I know what I want this to be. (Hilary, PhD graduate)

Hilary identifies scholarly characteristics, such as finding direction and taking ownership of her research, letting her theoretical concepts reveal the visual connection. Christina and Ken see how their work moves from fragmentation to being connected to a bigger picture or wider perspective, and Veronica realizes that research is an integrated journey. Others also describe having such ‘eureka’ moments of recognition within specific parts of their research and the ‘click at completion’ when all that they have done fits together, just as Veronica describes. Some attribute the ‘click’ as coming from the process itself, others as coming from their skills to make clear decisions or eliminating extraneous work or to pull the work together. For fine art researchers their struggle with the uncertain or unknown brings transformation; as David, a doctoral graduate, has said, ‘you go into a PhD one person and you come out another’. However, this struggle is multi-faceted for the fine art candidate, from searching for a new way to approach research and art making to discovering coherence where there are limited research guidelines, to contributing to new knowledge in the fine art area of inquiry.

A capacity for scholarship means that successful visual arts scholars will find a way to balance both their thinking skills and art-making skills. Candidates in this study began to understand the value of thinking skills, including reflective skills, searching for what is new, what is innovative, becoming flexible, while at the same time advancing art-making skills in new directions. Both art making and scholarly practices benefit in the development of a new body of visual art knowledge.

Conclusions

Fine art candidates experience an exacting level of uncertainty during their doctoral candidature. This potentially erodes their intrinsic commitment, as revealed by the range of anxieties experienced by the informants in this study, and manifests as rupture in response to an epistemological rift or fault line in their experience of knowledge. The intensity of their struggle around the discontinuity in knowledge is revealed in their attempts to bridge the gap between what they know and what they do not know. This is evident in the way candidates question their existing well-developed art practices and the technologies required and explicate their lack of conceptual or written skills.

Many elements of the findings reported here support earlier studies that recognized the dilemmas that artists face when undertaking a practice-based research degree in the visual arts, notably the findings of Hockey (2007). What is new is a shifting of the site of struggle from the personal, such as threats to creativity or creative identity, to an epistemological struggle brought on by a severe disruption or discontinuity in, or rupture to, existing knowledge. The rupture is an emotional as well as intellectual phenomenon that echoes the connections psychologists identify between knowing and ‘feeling’. For fine art candidates discontinuity seems most concentrated in the need for resolution in their research between art practice and knowledge construction. The central and unique challenge to the fine art researcher is to establish successful connections between visual and written languages, subjectivity and objectivity, and between creativity and intellectualism. Candidates create a new (knowledge) space in which they advance their writing about art as research, balance the written and visual elements of their thesis, and create new knowledge.

These findings demonstrate elements of change necessary for transformation that involves connections between emotional experiences, conceptions of self and, in this case, research practice (Neumann, 2006; Stevens-Long et al., 2012; Wood, 2006). A response to an epistemological rift, at first an intense challenge, becomes a catalyst for flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), and for scholarly practices, such as acquired adaptive skills to deal with uncertainty (Pearson and Brew, 2002). As Sullivan (2010) indicates, resolved research projects result from researchers coming to know their world differently, as well as the capacity to create new knowledge.

Why candidates resolve rupture in particular ways, such as a need to take time out from their research, may not always be clear. Yet it seems these detours, often made into more familiar territories of art making, may be crucial to candidates’ application and maintenance of flow within a combined art-making and thinking landscape, which in turn brings about direction for a successful resolution to their research.

To come face to face with an epistemological rift is indicative of a candidate being on track to becoming an independent scholar and knowledge producer. It may not be clearly understood by new candidates, or by their supervisors, that such common reactions and responses to uncertainty as are reported in this study are crucial for candidates’ independent growth and thinking. That is, an emotional response to rupture is a process to be embraced, not avoided. Supervisory reassurance during this crucial yet predictable learning and development phase is likely to encourage students’ personal decision-making as they determine their own ways forward through such ruptures, to become competent scholars and researchers.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the input of Professor Anne Graham and Miranda Lawry, colleagues in Fine Art at Newcastle, who were consulted on the instrument development and were actively involved in the interviewing, assisted by Jennifer St George, the Research Assistant on the project at that time. We appreciate added insight derived from the reviewers’ comments.

Author biographies

Beverley Simmons is a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Research Training and Impact (SORTI) in the Faculty of Education and Arts, the University of Newcastle, Australia, and a practising artist since 2008. Her research interests are sociological, cultural studies and visual arts higher education. She is published in Hall and Tucker’s Tourism and Postcolonialism (2004), Annals of Leisure Research (2001) and Leisure Studies Association Newsletter no.50 (1999).

Allyson Holbrook is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Research Training and Impact (SORTI) in the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She teaches in research methods and is author of numerous peer reviewed articles, the most recent in Studies of Higher Education (2011). She is recipient of several national competitive grants in the area of the doctorate.

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