7.30 am: Breakfast.

8.30 am: Into town and onto the School.

8.45 am: I set up for the day’s third-year painting tutorials. We’re now well past the half-way point in the module. The conversations have begun to change. I’m emphasising the end-point, the principle of drawing the circle operations smaller, and the necessity of crystallising an intent that stands up under scrutiny. 11.00 am: I needed to get out, take the air, feel the chill, and wander in the ‘forest’:

11.30 pm: A rescheduled tutorial gave me space to catch up on internal admin and to read through my symposium paper in readiness for tomorrow. At this juncture, I’m reading for timing. The window of delivery will be tight. 12.00 pm: Back to tutorials. If you are going to learn to play a composition by, say, Bach, then, the way you’d learn it is to isolate the first few bars, develop a competence in rendering them, move on to the next few bars, do the same, and, finally put them together. You’d continue in this manner until the whole piece was in your grasp. In other words, you’d not expect to play the entire composition in one go. And yet we’re prone to launch into a painting without preparation and consideration hoping against hope that somehow we’ll pull it off.

2.00 pm: The afternoon shift. Some principles and observations derived from today’s engagements:

• The proof of the pudding is in the painting.
• You’ll lose the ‘muse’ on occasion.
• Without a clear sense of intention, your decisions are arbitrary.
• T: ‘Walk. Don’t run!’ Move from the beginning to the end of a project in phased steps. Break down the problem into manageable parts and, thereafter, put them together to form the finished work.’
• T: ‘Come in! Sit down, please. Stop. Rest. Engage the moment … only now shall we proceed. ‘
• Absenteeism makes the heart grow weary.
• The best students bring out the best in the teacher.
• If you try to attempt everything you’ll end up doing nothing.
• The conclusion of the Portfolio module ought to represent a signpost in the direction of the Exhibition module.

7.30 pm: Thursday evening mop-up of teaching admin, and some last minute preparations for tomorrow’s symposium.