Discovery of art-based distillation: Doctoral inquiry of the one-canvas method

The one-canvas method is heavily oriented to the interplay of images that transform over a sustained period. Art-based inquiry that explored how compositions were created and transformed was led by two core assumptions of Shaun McNiff’s vision: art-making communicates differently from linear and logical comprehension and language, and an aesthetic focus generates unique ways of understanding and creating knowledge. This article reflects on the distillation of artistic evidence, an ongoing refining and discovery process through which outcomes emerge, that required a continual return to the one-canvas art and art-making as centres of discovery. Illuminating McNiff’s commitment to art as evidence, the primacy of the artist-self fostered empirical exploration that felt honest, alive and generative. McNiff’s curiosities about multiple perspectives with attention to whole-body multi-sensory observation, engagement as researcher-participant and reflection using digital media were integral to a research design that culminated in artistic essence as discovery.