Simone Maier,
Class of 2023

Lecturer and Artist

Ode to Colour

I’m here because I care about the potential of art education to transform the lives of adults.

On this MA, I’ve explored conflicts between my role as a foundation art and design tutor and the neoliberal imperatives of a university. I encounter clashes such as having to resist a deficit model of teaching and assessing student work against learning outcomes that infer a particular type of ‘cultural capital’ within a higher education framework that many students do not understand. I’ve confronted teaching predicated on expectations of art and design education that are unknown to many of the widening participation students accepted into the post-92 university I work within.

Ode to Colour is a series of 10 oil paintings inspired by Amy Sillman’s Colour as Materiallecture which helped me to put aside struggles with the often-contradictory expectations of art education such as taking risks but presenting neat outcomes within a few weeks. I tried to disregard my outcome, to focus on material agency, colour and composition. Painted while I listened to an audiobook that challenged an anthropocentric worldview; the panels provided a mental and material surface on which to reflect on my role as a producer of another commodity: education. Ode to Colour thereby serves as a meta-reflection on my pedagogic capacity to challenge the neo-liberal maligning of students as buyers of education, gaining a rubber stamp to becoming makers of things for capitalist consumption. Instead, colour and material agency come to the fore.