Where to start in reconnecting here with an audience that I haven’t talked to in years?
Each October, when our new MPhil cohort arrives, we bring folks together to share each person’s life stories. We adopted the Pecha Kucha, a presentation of 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds, to balance brevity and creativity. Everyone has 6 minutes to define themselves through their personal style and flair, relating their background, evolution, and aspitrations.
I’ve always been drawn to a lecture style popularized by neuroscientist Terry Picton, who paired his research content with modern art. Each painting wasn’t just decoration—it reinforced key concepts while using the artist to reflect the researcher’s own journey. This approach made the material more engaging and memorable, activating both sides of my brain and deepening my connection with the talk’s subject.
So, when it came time to prepare my presentation, I immediately thought of impressioist artist James Whistler to frame my own story. An American expatriate living in the UK during the mid-1800s, his sitution resonaes with mine. His artworks pioneered tonalism, a style that uses shape, value, and color to create powerful emotional impacts. He described his creative process as composing on his palette, gathering the result onto his brush, and finally unrolling it with a stroke across his canvas.
His Nocturnes are particularly evocative: I’ve had the chance to see many of them in galleries and exhibitions across Europe and the U.S. So, beginning from these works, I structured my talk in two parts. The first is ‘Landscape’, mapping my defining elements across life. The second is the ‘Tapas’: plates that set a table of my interests and aspirations. Each frame is built from a single-word theme, a painting that captures its essence, and recent photos that bring it to life.
I did it all ‘Saatchi -style’, with few words, and high-contrasts, and strong visual impact. Accmpanied by 20 seconds of narration for each frame, exposition, the harmony of the presentation hopefully felt cohesive, distinct, and recognizable.. collection of frames formes an identity with an individual and recognisable harmony.
You can view the full deck by clicking the graphic above; I’ll be revisiting key elements from it across the next essays.
