MINDFUL DRAWING AS INQUIRY
Reflecting on my experiences of becoming an art educator in a hostland of U.S. art education, I often cross the distance between practices of studio art, teaching art, and research and switch in-between identities, practices, languages, cultures, and contexts.
Like a pendulum bob, I constantly sway between the field of art and education; roles of the artist to educator, researcher to teacher, student to instructor; travel between local to global, home culture to host culture, and switch between skill-oriented teaching practice to concept-oriented teaching practice.
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Image on the right shows my inter- lens - a conceptual framework created for my dissertation which informed my inter- theoretical framework for data analysis.
There is nothing more suitable than exploring the self like a visual artist to understand my cognitive experience and research lens. As Edward Hopper once said, great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world (Hopper, 1953, p. 8). Schooled in studio art of drawing and painting as a means to explore my inner life helps me understand my artistic and research motives.
For me, art practice, in particular, mindful drawing practice, is a way of understanding myself as a research instrument. For Saldana, “the arts are not just products, they are also epistemological processes—in other words, ways of knowing through personal inquiry and aesthetic expression (2011, p.15). Through this mindful and reflective practice, I realized that my lived experiences are embodied in the metaphor of swaying grass—a nickname given by my parents, which has influenced my way of living and perceiving the world. This realization is the steppingstone toward the construction of my theoretical framework.
(this video shows a portion of my mindful drawing practice)