Aesthetic experience as becoming: Two perspectives

It is customary to write about aesthetics either in an academic mode or from the point of view of art education. After many years teaching philosophical aesthetics,I know only too well that these two approaches tend to suppress what is really important - dwelling on the experiences of art and what art does - that impel one towards trying to understand what aesthetic experience is in the first place. I have decided for this collection to write about some of the aesthetic experiences that motivated me to set up two interdisciplinary art and aesthetics programmes in the UK. Following Part A of the contribution, it seemed both appropriate and consistent with this decision to ask a former student and now practising artist, Linda Bolsakova, to comment on what initiated itself in me many years ago. Linda Bolsakova offers her own commentary in Part B.