Why I Applied to a Master in Fine Art and What It’s Teaching Me

I’ve been quiet on here and on social media in 2024, but life itself has been anything but still. Beyond my art practice, university lecturing, the shifting tides of perimenopause, and the not-so-quiet demands of everyday life, I decided to make space for a new adventure that had been calling me for a long time.

Some paths aren’t linear, they spiral. I’ve studied art for years, taken courses, kept my practice alive through seasons of change. But I never did the “official” thing: the MA in Fine Art. Until now.

At 54, I felt an unstoppable urgency driven by the need to root what had long been growing. My life-threatening experience with Covid certainly gave me a push. Life is one, short, and worth living meaningfully, without regrets. So why wait, or not do it at all?

Myself with a hydrophone recording the underwater sounds of the Thames...

What It Means to Study an MA in the UK as an Italian

As an Italian, doing a Master’s here in the UK is meaningful for two reasons:

• Art education here is structured in a way that doesn’t exist back home.

  In the UK, Master’s programmes in Fine Art (MA or MFA) are designed to be research-centred, with a strong emphasis on developing an autonomous and conceptually grounded artistic practice. The focus is on the artist as researcher, with a great deal of freedom to experiment, merge media, and question the relationship between theory and practice. Critical dialogue and independent thinking are central.

  In Italy, many postgraduate art programmes tend to be more generic academically or technique-based, often rooted in more traditional visual languages or following the trajectory set by the undergraduate years. Theoretical engagement is often less integrated with practice, and the notion of individual artistic research is not prominent (though of course, there can be exceptions).
  

• After twenty years of living and working in the UK, starting this MA has been a way to root myself differently — as an insider. It’s a gesture of belonging that feels cultural, intellectual, and emotional all at once. Even if I don’t stay here forever, this chapter is part of how I make sense of my time in this country.

Deepening my Artistic Practice

On an art level this MA is a deepening journey. A widening. It’s helping me name things I’ve sensed intuitively for years: that all materials have agency, that landscapes speak and remember, that collaborating with the more-than-human helps us make sense of our passage on this planet. That art is less about expressing something, and more about learning how to listen.

Besides painting, I’ve also begun walking with microphones, collecting traces, collaborating with tides and mud. I've started to include experimental film, field recordings, and participatory rituals that mirror the rhythms of the landscape.

Learning from the Thames Estuary

One project during this first year of MA has been the Thames Estuary, that, like so many coastal edges, is at risk to rising seas, stronger tides, and increasing floods. (On the Engage Environment Agency website you can find more about it).

The intertidal is an in-between — not quite land, not quite sea, but a living threshold where two ecosystems merge and make something new. It’s home to creatures who can breathe both air and water, who adapt to flux as a way of life.

Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to it. As someone who left one country and settled in another, I know what it means to live between worlds, to translate yourself across languages, cultures, and expectations. Like the estuary, I’ve learned that in-betweenness isn’t weakness. It’s a skill. A way of listening. A form of resilience.

But even resilience has limits. The intertidal space, once a metaphor for adaptability, is becoming a site of disappearance. This tension — between adaptation and loss — is what draws me there.

Theory as Companion

Alongside the practical work, one of the greatest joys of this MA has been diving deep into theory. Engaging with contemporary thinkers, from New Materialism to Posthumanism to Hydrofeminism, isn’t a side note, it’s a central pleasure for me. I genuinely love studying. Reading, reflecting, making connections, it feeds my practice as much as any material does.

These theories have become living friends in my studio. They’re tools for seeing differently. They’ve helped me think of art not as representation, but as relation. Not “about nature,” but “with it.”

Looking Ahead

If you are curious to see where this MA journey leads me, stay tuned as I'll be sharing reflections, failed experiments, muddy boots, and unruly theories. And if you’re composting your old stories and growing new ones, you’re in the right place :)