Friday. 9.30 am: To England and Bristol:

I’d been looking forward to seeing Albert Irvin and Abstract Expressionism at the RWA. ‘Bert’, as he preferred to be called, was my External Examiner, when I completed the BA (Hons.) Fine Art at Newport. He was an old-school gentleman: modest, courteous, and genuinely interested in what students had to say about their work. There was a abstract landscape painting on show, which he’d painted in 1977 – the year I graduated. I’d not before seen his works from this period. For the first time, I understood some of the considerations he’d voiced about my own work at the time, which was in the same mode.

Irvin’s most significant work were his large acrylic abstractions. The colours burned in the afternoon light. He, along with Hodgkin, Hoyland, Heron, and Riley, were among the most accomplished colourists of his generation. In the adjoining exhibition of abstract expressionist works were several that had appeared in The New American Painting Show, which had showed in London in 1959. (I missed the occasion by just two months.) The exhibition was a game-changer for many of the UK’s principal abstract painters at the time. And what a time that was for painting.

Saturday. I alighted on a copy of a record that had been released in 1967 to help amateurs set up their stereo record system. The movement from monaural to stereophonic reproduction was a huge technological leap for the home enthusiast. The recording is a series of tutorials on how to set up phonographic equipment, covering, among other things, left-right separation and balance, tone and colouration, groove jumping and crosstalk, and turntable rumble. The latter was tested using a track (‘band’) entitled ‘Silent Grooves’. It’s a portion of the disc on which nothing is recorded. My mind fizzed with the potential and referentially implied by this idea:

Sunday. Following a morning service and lunch with friends, I headed home: