In terms of research and development, I began with foundational sketches because it felt important to establish a concept, a voice, and a subject for what I wanted to communicate. That approach may not be necessary for every artist, but it proved to be an essential starting point for me. I found great freedom in working quickly and provisionally, without worrying about finish, and instead using drawing as a way to test ideas, moods, and symbolic possibilities. Looking back, it is striking to see how several of those initial sketches remained surprisingly close to the final resolved works, while others became points of departure that led elsewhere.
Although I arrived at the project with a fairly strong initial direction, the process of critique, conversation, and mentorship gradually opened the work outward. What began in a relatively concentrated way evolved through trial, testing, and a number of winding, sometimes unexpected paths. While I remained committed to a distinct palette and core medium, I branched more widely in relation to text, abstraction, surface, material support, and even thematic emphasis. Some of these tangents were not pursued as fully as I would have liked, largely because of time, but I now recognise them as ideas worth coming back to. Writing all of this down has been important in itself, because it let me hold on to discoveries that might otherwise have been lost.
The wider structure of the programme also shaped the work in important ways. I learned a great deal through group critiques, mentored sessions, and the time spent with peers and tutors. Alongside this, my self-directed drawing practice, while not formally part of Resolution, helped me build confidence in my line and my eye. The professional practice sessions were just as important. Visiting studios and galleries, listening to artists speak about their work, and attending seminars on things like writing an artist statement helped make sense of parts of artistic life that nobody tells you about.
Exhibiting at TU Dublin also provided valuable practical experience, as did having The Last Run accepted for an open call in London and shown in Chelsea. Beyond the programme itself, I made a conscious effort to read widely, not only about artistic process but also about the business of art. Travel also became part of my research. Whenever possible, I visited galleries, exhibitions, and museums in order to better understand different regional contexts and visual cultures, from street art and contemporary galleries to Renaissance drawings and paintings in Florence. All of this fed back into the work, shaping both how it looks and what it is trying to say.
Overall, this project has helped me clarify not only what I want to say, but also how I want to work. It has shown me that my practice is rooted in the tension between image, atmosphere, and meaning. Just as importantly, it has shown me that the apparent detours of a project are often not distractions at all, but the places where future work begins.
In terms of position, I found this aspect of the project valuable because it pushed me to look more deliberately at contemporary artists rather than relying only on broader or more historical influences. That process opened up my frame of reference and introduced me to artists I had not come across before, several of whom now feel important to where my work is going. Discovering Walton Ford, for example, was particularly affirming, because his work overlaps so directly with what I care about. His paintings are technically extraordinary and perhaps more illustrative than I ultimately want my own work to be, but it is encouraging to see that work rooted in ecological subject matter, beauty, and critique can occupy a serious and successful place in contemporary practice.
Other artists opened up different possibilities. Lee Gihun's work, with its performative and live quality, showed me how simplicity and immediacy can still be powerful and affecting. Artists such as Sundaram and Anselm Kiefer also encouraged me to think more expansively about materiality, especially the use of found or degraded materials, which fed directly into my own interest in working with cardboard and with surfaces that carry associations of damage, waste, and environmental consequence.
I was also directly influenced by Aida Makoto's ability to construct compositions that operate differently at a distance and at close range, drawing the viewer in through visual impact and then revealing more troubling detail over time. That duality has become increasingly important to me. Josh Keyes, like Walton Ford, demonstrates how highly crafted and overtly representational work can still carry urgency and critical force, while figures such as Banksy and Bob and Roberta Smith make visible how protest-based practices still matter, and how text, message, and visual punch can work together.
Taken together, these artists helped me to see more clearly where I want my own work to sit. I want it to bring together beauty and responsibility, craft and critique. I want the work to draw the viewer in through atmosphere, material presence, and technical care, and then ask them to remain with the discomfort of what they are actually seeing. Going forward, I see my position as one rooted in protest subject matter, often symbolic in form, and concerned with the tension between beauty and damage.
In many ways, it feels as though the project has unfolded over a much longer period, because the amount of experimentation, trial and error, learning, and personal evolution contained within it has been so significant. It has been a transformative process, both artistically and personally.
What has emerged is not simply a collection of individual works, but a body of work where the pieces speak to each other, and the conversation between them carries more than any single drawing could alone. The six resolved works operate across two connected registers: the four large-scale sanguine drawings on paper and the two wood panel pieces. Across both, the same ideas and concerns run through the material, and the mark-making feels right for how serious the subject matter is. Everything I learned through experimenting with wetting, layering, selective erasure, different surfaces, and fixing processes let the work arrive at a level that feels both controlled and alive.
In exhibition, I see the six pieces functioning as a single, unified statement. The four paper works share a consistent scale, medium, and tonal range, and are intended to be displayed together so that the viewer moves through the series as a sequence of encounters — ice, horn, bone, and water — each one asking them to stay a little longer with what is being lost. The two wood panels then shift the register, introducing texture, text, and a looser, more atmospheric treatment that opens the work outward. Hung alongside the paper series, they show the range of what drawing can hold: from the patient and seductive to the raw and confrontational.
I am especially pleased that three of these pieces were selected for exhibition, because they are among the most important to me in terms of what they communicate. They function well both from a distance and at close range, holding together as images while rewarding closer looking through surface, detail, and atmosphere.
Perhaps most importantly, this project has reinforced for me that drawing is not merely a preparatory act. It is the medium through which this protest is carried out. Looking ahead, I want to continue making work of this standard and seriousness, while pushing the language further - particularly in the directions opened up by the wood panel works, where text, abstraction, and found surfaces begin to carry the argument in new ways.