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This thesis discusses the development of my painting practice in relation to disparate encounters, among them struggles with language, adventures with novels and engagement with theory. The focus is less on a direct formal analysis of my paintings and more on the different experiences that have compelled their making. This thesis begins with a discussion of the central concept of ekphrasis-understood as 'the art of describing works of art' or 'the verbal representation of visual representation'-but shifts quickly to different modes of writing and verbal representations of other experiences. Here, I describe my paintings in a different, less direct way; I attempt to illuminate my paintings and the formal decisions that went into them by shining a light on other phenomena or experiences. In so doing, I suggest that a painting is like a multi-layered text, full of different stories, motifs and references. There is no one way to access a painting; it does not have a single, objective meaning that should be 'understood' by the viewer. Instead it is conceived as a text incorporating a multitude of different stories, entry points and references, which can be combined by the viewer in their own, subjective way. This conception of the artwork-underpinned by Julia Kristeva's concepts of 'intertextuality' and 'intersubjectivity', discussed in this thesis' second appendix-has also informed my hyper-text project Your, My and Our Dictionaries. Within it, I attempt to diversify the language of today, proposing means by which writing, as an aesthetic practice, might consider the definition, role and boundary of painting.

In Chapter 1, we study the impact of increased transparency in the reporting of OCI on firms’ foreign currency cash flow hedging practice and the value relevance of this change. We find a reduced level of foreign currency cash flow hedging among firms that experienced the greatest volatility of unrealized hedging gains and losses while reported these items opaquely before mandated increase in transparency. Our results show that cash flow hedging is value relevant only when reported in a more transparent format and that the increase in transparency reduces information asymmetry. Consistent with managers’ fears of investor confusion following additional transparency, we show that investors unsymmetrically incorporate the implications of unrealized hedging gains and losses. In Chapter 2, we find the mandated increase in OCI reporting transparency eliminated the difference between sophisticated and non-sophisticated investors in the usefulness of the information. We also find investors value efforts by managers to reduce translation exposure through net investment hedging and pay greater attention toward translation losses which drives management hedging, particularly when the information is reported transparently. In Chapter 3, I decompose the translation adjustment into temporary and long-term portions. I find that investors are able to distinguish the long-term and temporary components of the translation adjustment, and properly impound only the long-term portion in stock pricing. The results also show that managers adjust their net investment hedging decision based mainly on the long-term translation impact. The transitory/temporary portion has limited impact on either the decision to hedge or level of hedging. I also find that managers are more likely to hedge and hedge more when they face long-term translation losses.