Artistic Research Projects
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Arts & Humanities Research Council funded Daphne Jackson Fellowship, University of Exeter (2026-2029)

‘Breastfeeding as Living Process in Art, Biology and Experience’

The question of how we visually represent life has profound consequences for how it is understood and supported. This fellowship uses drawing as artistic research to make visible the hidden biological processes of breastfeeding – revealing it not as a simple natural act but as an extraordinary living bridge between two (or more) bodies. Working with scientists at the UK’s only two human lactation laboratories (Cambridge and Oxford) and THRiVE Discovery Lab in Canada, I create scientifically-informed artwork showing human milk processes at molecular, cellular, and whole-body scales. This ongoing biological connection – where immune factors, microbiomes and nutrients flow between maternal and infant systems – simply does not exist in current visual culture. Grounded in two years of auto-ethnographic data collected whilst breastfeeding my own twins, the research develops conceptual frameworks bridging process philosophy, feminist phenomenology, and topological thinking, generating peer-reviewed publications and laying foundations for expanded future research with breastfeeding communities. This fellowship builds directly on the methodology developed in Representing Biology as Process (below).

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AHRC Post-Doctoral Research Project (2017 – 2021)

Representing Biology as Process
Anderson (Co-I), Dupré (PI), Wakefield (Co-I)

Project website: www.probioart.uk

Arts & Humanities Research Council funded project

The question – whether we should think of the world as consisting of entities statically defined by essential properties (i.e. in philosophical jargon, “substances”), or as processes, that undergo and persist precisely because of change – is a fundamental metaphysical dichotomy, debated since the pre-Socratics. Since the rise of atomism in the seventeenth century the substance view has dominated scientifically grounded philosophy. John Dupré’s ERC-funded project, A Process Ontology for Contemporary Biology, develops the thesis that for biology, at least, this has been a profound mistake (Dupré 2012: Nicholson and Dupré, in press). Dupré argues that living systems are always dynamic at multiple spatial and temporal scales and their persistence, far from being merely the continued possession of essential properties, is the result of the finely articulated interplay of multiple processes.

Visual representation is essential both to the practice and the communication of science. However, whereas drawing in the past played a central role in fields such as morphology and embryology, the rise of photographic and digital technologies and the growing emphasis on molecules as opposed to whole organisms have increasingly marginalized drawing practices. Therefore, a serious problem faced in the development of a fully processual biology is that most visual representation strongly suggests a realm of static things. For example, the presentation of an organism will be of a particular developmental ‘stage’, typically the mature adult, which confounds the fact that this is a momentary temporal stage of the developmental process. Even where representation of something as plainly dynamic as metabolism, for example, will include arrows representing time, the natural reading will be of transitions between a fixed array of things (instances of chemical kinds). Moreover, while visual images or ‘visual explanations’ (Tufte 1997) in science depend on a variety of graphic devices ranging from the use of video, and photography to the use of computational graphic software, simulation and hand-drawing, these means of making images largely depend on mechanistic models (for, or of, their objects) which are already intertwined with their methods of production.If you are in the market for superclone Replica Rolex ,https://www.fakewatch.is/ Super Clone Rolex is the place to go! The largest collection of fake Rolex watches online! Her language expression ability is excellent and fluent and natural.

The decline of drawing in scientific practice is epitomised by Wakefield’s research field, cell division and mitosis. Whereas 20 years ago, as a PhD student, his learning was centred around direct participation, through microscope-based observation and drawing of cells, his own PhD students are now further removed, watching 2D representations of cells on computer screens and printing out screen-shots. For the last 5 years, his interest in this distinction has grown, leading to an exploratory collaboration with the PI and, through this application, the Co-I. Anderson’s work over a number of years has highlighted the epistemic costs of the decline of graphic skills in the Life Sciences. She has researched the ways in which scientists have used drawing as a way of developing deep insights into their subject matters, and in her own practice, under the rubric of ‘Isomorphology’, she has developed classificatory methods that highlight formal parallels cutting across the traditional boundaries of animal, mineral and vegetable. This work has been carried out in collaboration with a variety of scientists and museum curators and has resulted in residencies, exhibitions, talks and workshops. Building on the Isomorphology project, her more recent work, guided in part by extensive discussions with Dupré, has begun to explore ways of representing biological process, under the new rubric of Isomorphogenesis.

In line with the growing interest in process-centred understandings of biology, the present project will address the need for novel image-making practices to provide more intuitively dynamic representations of living systems through an innovative collaboration between art, biology and philosophy.

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4D Eye (2011-2023)

Project website: www.4d-eye.net

I have maintained a long-term collaboration with Mathematicians Professor Alessio Corti and Tom Coates at Imperial College London between 2011 and 2023 on higher dimensional geometry and the 3C in G project (2016-2021) ‘Classification, Computation, and Construction: New Methods in Geometry’ 

This long term collaboration included many exhibitions, workshops and events including:
2011: Royal Society, Special Project Award
2011: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Award, Pathways to Impact
2012: Keynote: ‘Drawing in Mathematics’ at ‘Drawing in STEAM’ Conference, University of the Arts London
2012: Leverhulme Artist in Residence Award, Imperial College, London
2014: Speaker, Mathematics and Culture Conference, Institute of Science, Venice
2015: ‘May the 4th be with you’ Science Museum LATES, Science Museum, London
2015: CMADC Workshop ‘Drawing in the Fourth Spatial Dimension’ in collaboration with mathematician Prof. Alessio Corti, Cornwall Morphology and Drawing Centre, Cornwall
2015: ‘A Call for Drawings’, MaHKU, University of the Arts Utrecht and UCL, London
2020: ‘Drawn to Investigate’, Ruskin Museum of the Near Future, Lancaster
2021-2022: ‘From Forces to Forms’, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York City, US
2022: Summer Academy (Organised by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Staffan Müller-Wille) – “Science and Art – Art and Research Today”, Switzerland, August 22-29
2023: Artist Talk with Mark Blacklock, chaired by Mariam Zulfiqar, Director of Artangel, Burton Grange, Leeds
2023-2024: And She Built a Crooked House, Artangel and Leeds 2023 Commission, Leeds
2024: Invited Speaker, The Northern Drawing School ‘Drawing and Mathematics Convention’, Skissernas Museum, Lund, Sweden
2024: Artist Talk, ‘And She Built a Crooked House’, Central Saint Martins, UAL
2024: Keynote, International Conference on Drawing Across Disciplines, University of Porto, Portugal
2025: Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award

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2014 – 2015

The Cornwall Morphology and Drawing Centre

Project website: www.cmadc.uk

The experience of working in both artistic and scientific contexts led me to found the ‘Cornwall Morphology and Drawing Centre’ (CMADC) in 2014, a space that brought practices, questions, knowledge and objects of art and science together. CMADC has provided a live testing ground for sharing my own drawing practices of Isomorphology, the Goethe drawing method, and Isomorphogenesis with the public. In this respect, CMADC contributed to contemporary practices that consider artwork as an educational medium, as associated with the ‘Educational Turn’.

The use of dematerialized mediums such as drawing workshops, fieldwork and discussions aims to expand the question of education as art in the context of CAST – an artist studio group and project space. CMADC aimed to explore ways in which art practice and learning can draw directly from Cornwall’s morphology resources: the landscape (fieldwork), Museum and University specimens and Art and Science practitioners.

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PhD: Drawing as Epistemology for Morphology

PhD Research Project, 2011-2015 (Part-time scholarship)

A collaboration between the following institutions: University of the Arts London, Falmouth University and The Natural History Museum, London

This PhD project was later developed into the book ‘Drawing as a Way of Knowing in Art and Science’ (Intellect, 2017)

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Leverhulme Artist in Residence Award 2012

‘Hidden Geometries’

Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London

This residency allowed Anderson to explore mathematical and biological forms that she would otherwise not be able to access. Through exhibitions of her work and a publication, these forms have been made visible and accessible to the public in both an artistic and scientific context. Anderson’s experience of observational drawing informs her lateral connections between the ‘hidden forms’ of mathematics and forms observed in nature, providing a new entry point and comparison through which the public can approach and access these challenging and fascinating geometries. More about the project here

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Wellcome Trust Arts Award 2010

‘Portraits: Patients and Psychiatrists’

Project publication: Portraits: Patients and Psychiatrists
Project blog

In 2009-2010, Anderson won a Wellcome Trust Arts Award titled ‘Portraits: Patients and Psychiatrists’
described as ‘unique in Art History as the first series of portraits to mix psychiatrists and psychiatric patients indiscriminately in one collection’ (Jordanova, Schupbach 2010). The series of 16 life size etchings and accompanying publication has toured the UK and is currently held in the collections of the Wellcome Trust and the Victoria and Albert Museum. This collaboration between Anderson and Forensic Psychiatrist Dr.Tim McInerny (Bethlem Royal Hospital), enabled the artist to enter each individual’s environment; The Bethlem Royal Hospital, The Maudsley, London Health centres and schools, and even individuals homes. In this series of fourteen life-size etched portraits, the individual is identified, not by name and occupation, but visually, by their biographies and internal personal lives. Public and private self are united through Andersons curiosity and compassion; as her probing of inner worlds, as bizarre and entangled for the practitioners as the patients, links all the portraits together. The etchings explore medical ‘phenomena’ such as neuroses, phobias, traumas, disability, disease and injury. These portraits are ‘medical’ in a special and profound sense that notions of medicalization cannot capture.

This project toured the UK and has been exhibited at the Freud Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum where it is now in their permanent collections.

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Jerwood Artist in Residence 2010

Observational Drawing as Epistemic Practice in the Natural Sciences

Observation of the Jerwood Drawing Prize (2010) and engagement with its submitted works prompted an inquiry into contemporary drawing practices beyond the fine art context, specifically within the natural sciences, where drawing has historically served as a primary instrument of knowledge formation.

This project investigated the continued role of observational drawing across natural science departments and collections at University College London, the Natural History Museum, Kew Gardens, and UCL’s Observatory at Mill Hill. Through direct engagement with specialists including archaeologists, astronomers, botanists, geologists, and mycologists, and access to their working collections, the research examined whether drawing retains epistemic function in contemporary scientific practice.

Findings suggest that observational drawing persists across disciplines, maintained by practitioners who regard it as analytically distinct from other modes of visual recording. Though not always formalised within written curricula, drawing continues to be valued as an irreducible observational method.

The resulting artworks draw on collections held at Kew, UCL, NHM, and Mill Hill. Each work takes compositional and conceptual inspiration from a historical natural science drawing, selected for its dual status as scientific record and aesthetic object, while substituting original forms with morphologically analogous specimens from the same collections. For example, Hooper’s anatomical rendering of a haematoma of the brain is reinterpreted through the mineral haematite, exploiting shared formal properties across biological and geological registers.

Project blog here
Project Publication (draft)