8.15 pm. Exhibition boot-up. I then completed a number of email responses before moving to the Old College to begin my morning’s teaching. A singer is ‘crooning’ sheep calling songs in a nearby room. I’m reminded of Estonian folk music. A welcome, sonorous backdrop. The studios are full of incidental, accidental wonders — for those who have eyes to see:

‘Wrapped in plastic!’:

Some principles and observations:

• Do not be quick to pass judgement on a new piece of work. First impressions are notoriously unreliable.
• Work when you have the opportunity so to do, and not when the inclination takes you.
• It’s never the painting that requires the most work; it’s us.
• A reliable sense of self-confidence is predicated upon one’s past success: a proven ability to overcome difficulties. Expressions such as ‘I know I can do it!’, in the absence of a track-record, are merely aspirational and often delusional.
• Failure is a state of mind long before it becomes a fact.

12.00 pm. A trip to the train station and then an early lunch at my, now, habitual Thursday watering-hole:

12.45 pm. A period of admin catch up and polishing the new Abstraction module, which will be offered in 2015-16. 2.00 pm. Further one-to-one tutorials. 3.30 pm. A second year group tutorial. More and more students are making tentative incursions into abstraction. I feel that a revival is on the horizon. Notions such as ‘freedom’, ‘force of expression’, and ‘feelings’ were aired. They chimed with the rallying cries of Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s and 50s. When I was an undergraduate, a discussion of one’s inner life and personal life was actively discouraged. But in those day, men taught other men for the most part:

7.30 pm. I packed in preparations for tomorrow, undertook admin and blog updates, finalise appointments for the coming week, and gathered together material to keep me busy on the train. (I enjoy a roving office.)