I think I'm at a point where I need to stop writing my paper and get some feedback. I'm already over the 3500 word point and have over 20 references. The assignment brief asks for between 8-10. I am worried that my paper is currently far too 'undergrad' in style, I don't think there's enough critical or original thinking in it. It's still very much at the point where it's presenting other peoples ideas and then drawing conclusions from them... I need to get more of my ideas in there. I think I have the ideas my problem is not quite knowing how far to go with cutting out what others have said... I need some advice!
I feel like this has been a tremendous exercise already in developing my thinking about 'place' and how I might express myself in my work. The selection of the artists has been really interesting because Neil Bousfield is explicitly making work about place and researching it and I spoke to him so I feel like I've been handed him on a plate. By contrast Cezanne has oodles written about him, he seems to be in almost every book about art that I own to the point that I feel overwhelmed with information about him, but I have to do all the application of the theory about place and I feel like I have to really prove my point about him. I can... I just don't know if I have yet!
It would be easy to say that I need more words... it did cross my mind that you could do a whole PhD applying place theory to Cezanne (no I'm not going to... yet!!!) but I don't have the luxury of that any words. I'm pondering the structure and whether I should look at place theory separately and then the artists together and keep it all separate or whether I should overlap them more.
At the moment I feel like I know an awful lot more than I have put on the page, and that I've made connections but not explicitly written about them but left them for the reader to also make themselves (which I need to not do!)
It might be time to pause, breathe and get some feedback!
