A First Brush with Philosophy

Book in for the Celebrity Brush with Philosophy on 12th October here:

Book a turn as a sitter-participant for October 13-18 here: 

9-11th September 2022
BSA Symposia - The Whodunit Theory of Expression
-- Download Handout -- 

What makes a painting sad?

It's a whodunit. 

Why should we be troubled by the claim that a painting is sad? The philosopher responds to this in the following way: paintings are not sentient, they have no psychological life and therefore they cannot be sad. If paintings cannot be sad, at least not in the same way a person can be sad, then they cannot express sadness in the way a person expresses sadness. But, if paintings are not expressing sadness, when we call them sad, then, what are we reporting? And why is our art critical practice so out of step with philosophical wisdom?

'Time for Beauty'
BSA Fellowship 2022-3 

I am thrilled to have been awarded the BSA Postdoctoral Fellowship 2022-3. My project will be to explore the poorly defined concept of time-based aesthetic properties in (still) pictures, which I claim, helps to explain the representation and the expression of sophisticated emotions, such as regret, nostalgia, and euphoria.  This challenges a longstanding assumption that expressiveness in a picture (and other aesthetic properties) depends solely on spatial extension -  a curve here or a line there – while musical expressiveness depends on temporal properties namely, rhythm, melody, and cadence. However, given that sophisticated emotions such as nostalgia point to the past, it seems that the expressive qualities of at least some (such as nostalgic) pictures are interestingly time based.

Films with a philosophical twist

Art & Emotion

In collaboration with The National Galleryy Written & Produced by Vanessa Brassey.