WFH: DAY 45/LENT 14. 7.00 am:

7.45 am: A communion. 8.15 am: A review of the day. It’s now an established tradition that, from Wednesday night until the time of their tutorial today, some of my third-year painters post to the Teams page images of work that they’d undertaken since the last we time we engaged. I prepared for the week ahead. It required a different complexion, balance of activities, and set of emphases. (The difference between a dull and repetitive routine and an imaginative and varied routine can be significant.) Someone I know, who (like me) has ME, felt decidedly unwell following their Covid-19 vaccination. So, flexibility also needs to be built into my itinerary from Tuesday afternoon onwards.

9.00 am: ‘Round 1 (Ding!)’. In a few weeks time, I’ve resolved, the students and I will return to the feedback given to them at the end of their previous module, in semester 1. We need to, together, dig deep into each of the compound criteria (‘creativity’, presentation’, ‘rationale’, and ‘studentship’) in order to determine precisely where the weakness in their attainment lay. By this means, we may better address how the deficits can be addressed by the close of this present module. Over the years, I’ve noticed that one of the conspicuous lacks in undergraduate student performance is their want of an enthusiastic awareness of contemporary art. They don’t take time to seek out exemplars relevant to their practice. I don’t mean that they should be forcing influences upon themselves, let alone copying precedents. (That’s a form of visual plagiarism.) Rather, they need to derive principles of good practice from their professional peers; be aware of the highest standards possible within the field of their interest; and enjoy the work of other artists, productively. They want for a hunger for art, in other words. They cannot continue to paint as though they’re inventing the practice from scratch. ‘Don’t work in a vacuum! Painting is hard enough as it is.’

1.30 pm: An interval before the afternoon shift to adjust the saddles and intonation on the Steinberger Spirit GT-Pro guitar. Good to put my hands to the something other than on a computer keyboard.

2.00 pm: Back in the saddle for the remainder of the tutorials. Some principles and observations derived from today’s engagements:

• T: ‘It’s not a question of whether its a good or bad idea but, rather, whether its a doable or impractical idea’.
• T: ‘The acquisition of learning and knowledge — not exhibitions, or grades, or any other measure of approval — should be your greatest ambition’.
• T: ‘Don’t push the work too hard too soon. Some works require a slow gestation in order to mature; they must be teased into being. Others fall into place quickly and almost effortlessly — like a magic jigsaw puzzle’.
• Y: ‘It takes courage to deliberately ruin an artwork by the radical undoing of all that you’ve done to it, to date. Remember, all artworks are, to a large extent, an outcome of the sum of myriad sequential destructions’. That’s how creativity operates.
• If you can’t discover the combination to the safe, then, ‘blow the bloody doors off’, as Charlie Croker in the Italian Job would advise.
• T: ‘You have to work harder and harder to get better and better. Take that as normative experience and expectation’.
• T: ‘You must learn as much from how others have represented your subject matter as from your own direct observation of it’.
• You can inculcate a sense of imperative in the student.
• Consistency, coherence, ambition, rigour. These are what are required if you hope to achieve significance. They are, in the first instance, attitudes that can be acquired, rather than innate talents.

6.30 pm: Practise session. 7.30 pm: The Thursday desk clearance.