December 3, 2015

8.40 am. Off to the Old College. Officially, this is the darkest November in many a year. I can believe it. The pervasive grey sky seemed to suck the colour and life out of everything and everyone it bore down upon:

2015-12-03-08.58.55

The prevailing sickness is taking its toll on studentship. When good students who attend regularly don’t turn up, you know something serious is amiss. Found paintings in the West Classroom:

IMG_0746

IMG_0747

10.30 am. Back at the School, I readied myself for a day of second year tutorials. Some principles and observations derived from my engagements:

  • We should try on artistic styles like clothes: see what fits, what’s comfortable, what’s us.
  • Buy decent brushes and paints; painting is hard enough with them and too painful without them.
  • We are tested as much upon an ability to discern our limitations and the problems that underlie the work, as we are upon the work itself.
  • We each have too many abilities for either one life or one practice. That’s part of the problem.
  • In exercising either an ability or an intent we may also exorcise it; some facilities and ideas are for but one work, rather than for a lifetime.
  • Our greatest work will be inward and invisible: the deepening of conviction; the nurturing of the soul life; and the refining of the mind. The quality of the outward and visible work is intimately bound up with this.
  • The problem is not that we make mistakes (this is inevitable) but, rather, that we fail to understand, and too often repeat, them. We can learn much from the original mistake … next to nothing from same mistake again.
  • There’s a moment, a realisation, a possibility, that we need to seize as soon as it occurs, otherwise it’ll pass us by and on to someone else.
  • Two choices often present themselves: to do either the obvious or the most difficult. Always choose the latter.

Late afternoon, in a space created by one absentee, I took time to look in on another colleague’s student. (My previous attempts had been frustrated.) Her sound work was fascinating; captivating. 5.10 pm the antepenultimate Abstraction lecture on ‘The Postmodern Condition’. We’re now in a very different world. I found myself longing for what what had gone before. Occasionally, problems with my laptop interrupted the flow of the presentation. With the best will in the world, one can’t foresee such anomalous behaviour. No big deal! The show went on.

6.45 pm. Practise session 1. 7.30 pm. I finalised teaching admin for the week, prepared the PowerPoint for Monday’s Abstraction lecture, and examined my grants budgets.

Previous Post
December 2, 2015
Next Post
December 4, 2015