‘Wonderfully ordinary’ Words from a Romantic Archive of Elizabeth Jolley’s Writing for Students: Creative Process as a Garland of Fragments

This paper will outline aspects of my practice-led doctoral research. Drawing on a history of Romanticism and the creative processes of the late Western Australian author Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007), my project tests a fragmentary approach to making creative works in recognition of the fragmentary or increasingly divided and interrupted nature of ordinary contemporary days. It explores the daily work of an artist in contrast to a conception of creative production as an uninterrupted and somehow separate activity conducted at a privileged (or tragically suffering) distance from the real world. As one of many notions surrounding artistic activity this idea must be understood as a stereotype. The aim of my research is therefore to make new creative visual artworks and writing and to discover ways to make these works as a part of ordinary contemporary daily life. That is, to develop a personal creative process and to make new creative works in the midst of ordinary days with all their demands, restrictions, responsibilities and expectations, so that daily life is illuminated through creative work. Within these works, daily life is a recognisable and integral part, although not the whole of what will be experienced by viewers and readers. Rather, it is hoped, my visual artworks and poetry, either experienced in the gallery or held and read in a book in one’s hands, might be as lamps that illuminate daily experiences, moments and objects through connections