At the end of the 3 months, I presented the work I had completed to my mentor. My current body of work is based upon still lives of Ball-Jointed-Dolls. These are fully articulated Asian dolls that can be painted and dressed to look realistic. I presented these dolls in dioramas, and painted them from life in watercolour and Chinese ink. The majority of the works I produced were around 42 x 30cm. I presented the 20 works completed over the 3 months. I had surprised myself in achieving this task, though the quality of works shifted considerably. Some works were quite detailed; others were experimental as I tried out different methods of working. Presenting these works to my mentor was quite difficult, as because they were done so instinctively, they were difficult to speak about. Many I did with very little planning and did it because it felt right, or I liked it. Having worked intuitively, I do not feel that I had resolved this body of work, and I was still uncertain how the work might progress going forward. My mentor was very critical of some works. In some works, I had chosen to paint the doll unclothed. This was a practical decision as I was concerned that the clothing gave the works an unnecessary cultural interpretation. The clothes; essentially, placed the doll in a specific place and time, and not simply as a still life. However, due to the realistic nature of the dolls and the fact that they were clearly gendered, then this made it difficult to not view them as neutral. My mentor found the paintings representing nude female dolls quite troubling, and she got me to consider how these works might effect how people might contextualise my work; something I had not given any thought to. She asked me to consider the market for this work, and where I wanted to position myself and my work.
