WFH: DAY 39/LENT 8. 7.00 am:

7.45 am: A communion. 8.15 am: Preparations for the day ahead, which would comprise third-year painting tutorials (chiefly), a lunchtime staff meeting, and further preparations for the week ahead. Making and consuming lunch would pose the biggest challenge of the next six hours. 9.00 am: Tutee #1:

This week, my general aim has been to encourage students to ratchet-up their personal expectations, and commit more firmly to the implications of their intentions. The Exhibition module has discernible phases that elide with each other. All my tutees are, now, in the second phase of consolidation and declaration. Having established a path, they must now walk thereon, turning neither to the left nor the right, nor looking back over their shoulder at what has been.

1.00 pm: A lunchtime staff meeting about the process of online applications and engagement. Food for thought:

2.00 pm: On with my discussions. Inevitably, the pastoral and the tutorial take place side-by-side in the present context.

Some observations and principles derived from today’s engagements:

• T: ‘Feeling and thinking ought to go hand-in-hand as you proceed with the painting’.
• T: ‘The more literal your rendering, the more inclined towards illustration the work will become’.
• T: ‘There are, as it were, too many pieces of furniture in the room. Begin by removing a few chairs’.
• T: ‘Why do you need to invest any more time in the work?’ Overworking is as culpable a practice as underworking an image’.
• T: ‘There’s no shame in putting down your brush for a week if that gives you time to reflect upon your work, and prevents you from ruining it’.
• I wish I’d a tablet to prescribe for students in order to rid them of that crippling determination to please anyone other than themselves in making art.
• T: Don’t make pictures for the exhibition wall; that’s too intimidating an expectation. Rather, aim to make the best painting you’re capable of, every time.
• T: Sometimes, you can polish and polish the picture, but it simply won’t shine. Radical action is required, instead’.
• S: ‘What’s Letratone?’
• S: ‘Dunno’ … ‘Not really’ … ‘Maybe’ … ‘Can’t tell’ … ‘You think?’ … ‘Guess so’ … ‘What do you think?’ … ‘Could, I suppose’ … ‘Can’t decide’ … ‘Tell me’.

7.30 pm: The Thursday-evening round up.