The third year show is being held at Clarendon House, George Street, Edinburgh. For the first time since first year, all disciplines in Art are coming together. Clarendon House offers three floors of exhibition space. The name of the show is 'Office Space'.

'Over time
Fragments
Fade
Into
Continuous
Edge (Space)'

This is a dyptich conceived as a way of putting my chosen theme in the context of an office. The two paintings are connected and also separated by a grid fashioned from the geometrics of the light fittings. The shape and size of the pieces are also those of the light fittings. They are designed to fit round a corner.

This is the theme for current work and also extends to Visual Culture. I am on the elective 'Currating and Exhibitions' and have to produce my own virtual exhibition consisting of up to eight artists of which I am one. I have decided to exhibit along with John Everett Millais 'Dew Drenched Furze', Max Ernst 'Forest and Dove' and 'Histoire Naturalle', John Piper 'Coventry Cathedral', Ian Hamilton Findlay - assorted sculptures including 'Man a Passerby', Richard Long 'A Line made by Walking', Rosamond Purcell - 'Bookworm' and finally David Martin 'Vessels'.

This was work produced in the first week. Across third year, we were given an A3 board on which to paint. I used it as a way to get back into painting, exploring texture and fading using an image from Largo. Oil on acrylic and mixed media.

'Trace' Exploring the long format to give expression to the character of the fragment extending into the sand and beyond. Painted in oil.

'Mosaic' I fought with this! Starting off with nail polish of all things - gloss and sheen like the internal space of a shell. Acrylic and mixed media overlaid with oil.

'Man Friday's Footstep'
Acrylic on canvas. This is one of three development pieces for the final diptych exploring the theme of man's imprint on nature. Given the Largo originations I though of using the 'tag' of the footstep that has mysteriously appeared around the village.

New semester, new direction - based on the old. The fragments of pottery and glass and other assorted items have come into their own. I have drawn them; isolated detail and colour; looked at shape and investigated in part how they came to be where they were found. The area of discovery is at Lower Largo, on the beach between the village and the old salt works at Viewforth. Along the way I made an amazing discovery - one for nostalgia - cowrie shells. I have not found them for years and thought it was just another childhood pastime. Not the case.

Symbolism and surrealism have informed the way I paint in order to marry surrealism with representation. Why have to go down just one route? The fragments are now treated as metaphors for humanity in the battle with nature centred on the coastline. Where the sea meets the land is a constant tumult of change. Over time these fragments lose all facets of individuality and being anonymous like the multiple grains of sand they nestle in.

The main sourses of inspiration have come from the work of Max Ernst, in his frottage and grattage pieces. Also the work of Rosamond Purcell. These have given me technical direction and also a scientific slant respectively. I was gratified to find in the work of David Martin, my painting tutor at Leith, a similar preoccupation with the passing of time and the effect we have on our landscape. At last I can see myself in the ranks of the contemporary.