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This week I have to do my first masters presentation.

OK, no big deal….!  So far this semester, I’ve been attending a geology module, and the contextual art lectures.  But I haven’t been doing anything specifically for the MA…  But now I have a deadline to get something down in a concrete-ish form!

So I have now spent a wonderful two days collating images and playing with mood boards.

This was extra therapeutic because I had a few ‘down’ days this week caused by all sorts of little things that I allowed to affect me, and the only person who could raise my spirits was, of course, me!

So as I browsed through the tourist brochures I’d collected on Agnes & my trip to Arizona last summer, I found myself getting excited about the colours and textures all over again.  It brought back all the wonderful memories of our travels, and instantly raised my mood and my energy level.

I have a large corkboard and I use both sides.  One side is my textures side….

The other is all about the amazing colours of the Arizona/Utah rocks at various times of day and weather conditions….

Agnes and I have a plan to produce work for a joint exhibition based on this trip, so this will be my base point.  I’m really looking forward to it as we have such different weaving styles, and Agnes’ sense of colour is just so wonderful!

It’s such a lovely way to get into the mood of a project to compile a board of images.  I spend quite a lot of time cutting images out of magazines, selecting them from my collections of cards, postcards, and general design inspiration.  I then spread them all out over the table, put the empty board in front of me and start playing with composition, positioning and re-positioning the different elements until I get a feeling that I like something….

When I first started creating mood boards, I always felt anxious that I was doing it wrong until I realised nobody else need see them.  Then a client saw 4 different boards and loved them, and I suddenly appreciated that what I thought was just playing expresses how I see things and other people like to see ‘inside’.  Now I have learnt to trust my sense of colour and form and don’t apologise any more!

So I feel I have something to show with my presentation.  I have been doing quite intensive texture research for a few years now, so I have lots of samples, and I have the mood boards to give a flavour of the work I am intending to do, and all I have to do now is present my thoughts and ideas with conviction and passion….