This site Visual Ph.D. is currently under development,


PhD proposal, to exploring the image as a universal world human language equal to an academic paper.

The sole purpose of the PhD is to explore the idea of art language is a independent human language and is equal to academic level without translating the art language into written English.

I don't propose that all artwork can be read at a academic level just like you would expect a poetry or a lyric to have the ability to turn into a PhD paper. However there are languages in art which can, this is what I am proposing to explore.

The PhD would put down a presidency for 100% art based PhD. As practitioners who work in the world of image all of the time it is strange how we have to translate our language into English for other art practitioners to read..

Particular looking at the long tradition of picture scrolls "emaki" in Japan, and observe several distictive pictorial conventions that developed to make most of the long horizontal format.
Examples of the classical emaki dating from the 12th centuries. "Heiji Monogatari", a war chronicle dating from the 13th century is an interesting example, Conversely what was happening at the similar time in Europe the Bayeux Tapestry.

when looking at modern artwork we have to take in appreciation that citizens of developed countries have been taught to use their left part of their brain when the visual creative side " the right" has been discouraged especially in the schools in Europe for the last 50 years.

As a severely dyslexic I am fortunate to have a very developed right part of the brain, when being assessed last time I was in the top 1% of the country for visual understanding however I was also in the bottom 1% for written English. We have technology now to compensate for the difficulties

This is why I feel that it is a very important time to develop and establish the image as a visual language in academic terms.

For more information please contact David Borrington at info@dekkle.com

Research by: David Borrington MA RCA
Association with: Dekkle Printmaking Studios Ltd