Leave me now.Leave me nowHope is gone,all my time’s run out(Moby, ‘Hope is Gone’). 5.15 am: I awoke; my mind racing. Since it was in gear, I returned to my desk and pushed on with those feedback reports that I’d not completed yesterday evening. 7.00 am: Showered: 8.00 am: A phone call from the family on the day of my…

6.00 am: I awoke, and failed to return to sleep: But who could’ve resisted such a lovely early-summer day. ‘Up, boy!’: 6.15 am: Showered. 7.45 am: A communion. 8.30 pm: Today began my assessment of the undergraduate exhibition and postgraduate show. Henceforth, what was art is now, also, the assessable response to the aims and objectives of the modules. This…

Frail as summer’s flower we flourish,Blows the wind and it is gone(Henry Francis Lyte, ‘Praise, My Soul, The King of Heaven’ (1834)). Over the weekend, my mother-in-law passed away after a short illness. She was 89 years of age, and the best mother-in-law anyone could have wished for. Even in her middle and late years, she was still a young…

May 15–17: There’s unparalleled busyness at this time of the year. The finalisation of the shows is a painfully slow process. Nerves are frazzled, confidence ebbs and flows, paranoia is at the door, and the unexpected takes place as though on cue. But we all pull together to pull it off. I think that I’ve walked up and down the…

Why did I open the cereal packet upside down? An act of subversion, perhaps. 8.00 am: A communion. Prayer sometimes comes like rain in the desert: faintly felt, one drop at a time, and with long intervals in between. 9.00 am: First year feedback tutorials began. While waiting for a call to the studios, I pressed on with admin and…

No hope is better than false hope. 8.20 am: A communion. 9.00 am: The beginning of an arduous but promisingly fulfilling week. I cast my eye over the mail in order to see what needed to be attended to immediately. I’d be bouncing from marking to teaching to advising, and from office to classroom to studio/exhibition space, for most of…

8.00 am: A communion. 8.30 am: I responded to a photograph, posted by one of our distinguished alumni, of the artist and one of her children together in a studio: Settings of the Psalms, The Pictorial Bible I, MOMA Machynlleth (December 2000) There were emails to tear open, marking to confront, and sounds to hear critically. This Saturday reminded of…

I must have been awake for hours, waking on the hour, every hour, for what felt like a very long time. Morning could not come soon enough. 8.00 am: A communion. 8.30 am: I’d spent yesterday evening reassembling the computer and electrical gear and dusting in my study, following the visit of Wil ‘the carpet’ and Tomos ap Wil ‘the…

8.00 am: A communion. 8.30 pm: My final trip to the Old College until the day of the MA fine art Portfolio assessments. There’s an antechamber between the door leading from the staircase to the door of the West Classroom. It’s windowless and usually in complete darkness. There’ve been times when I’ve walked the floor between them, blind – exercising…

Your life/My life. 8.00 am: A communion (in my studio on this occasion, while the study was presently out of action). A change of context alters the complexion of the discipline, to a degree. 8.30 am: My penultimate weekly pilgrimage, for a while, to the Old College to oversee one of my exhibiting MA student’s concluding efforts. Steering an artwork…