Even though I was accepted onto the PhD programme with a Scholarship, in the Scottish practice-led PhD system it is usual for researchers in their first year to be classed as MPhil students with a transfer to PhD after one year. For this transfer to take place students have to make a presentation of their work, give a brief talk and write a paper of around 10,000 words. Next week I will present some of my practical work in a public setting, the details of which I’ve listed below. After this I will be concentrating on my transfer paper for which I have been given a six-month extension.

For my Master of Fine Arts degree I started looking at the cross-over of interior and exterior landscapes. My initial investigations were done in quite a basic way, where I concerned myself with the sanitised representations of ‘man-made’ nature contained in domestic interior and exterior decoration, taking the separation of space provided by architecture for granted. The time-span that predominately interested me was from the 1750’s through to the Victorian age.

I’ve always been into submarines and ships, and basically anything that is big, metallic and man-made with an engine. From my grade C in physics and the realisation that ‘I ain’t no Einstein’, I allowed my working life to direct my interests. Two of my early career choices were apprentice mechanic and HGV driver, where I viewed myself as a practical pioneer of women’s rights to work in jobs that were at that time, mainly dominated by men.