8.15 am. I set up for the next two hours of lectures. In Art/Sound, I demonstrated feedback using a guitar and a 75-watt amplifier. How cool is that! I can’t imagine that there are too many pretexts for making such a dreadful din in the delivery of art history. 10.00 am. A surreptitious photograph of me during the second lecture of the day:

11.10 pm. Onward to the Old College, and a day of third-year painting tutorials. I detect a collective movement towards understanding among my group. I can be no more specific than that. Some observations and principles:

• We don’t have to determine the rules of the game before beginning a painting. More often we find the rules of the game in the process of painting.
• The question: ‘What do I want to say with my painting?’ is redundant. Painting is incapable of saying anything. If you must say something … you say it.
• Most problems in painting have a reasonable chance of finding a solution if the student establishes a consistent pattern of working. It’s in the mundane and habitual practice of our discipline that an answer often presents itself. So, we, too, must be present and available to greet it.
• An interesting subject does not, of itself, make for an interesting painting.
• A dull subject may be interestingly painted.
• Returning to an early preoccupation (be that a subject or a way of painting) may suggest either an appalling lack of imagination on the part of the student, or that this interest remains significant for them. In any case, its better to repeat one’s own, rather than someone else’s, work.

1.00 pm. A lunchtime, research-type meeting with my colleague in sound at Treehouse. 2.00 pm. Back into the fray.

6.20 pm. Practise Session 1. 7.30 pm. In the evening, I uploaded today’s teaching materials to Blackboard and launched the new FacePaint community page. It’s dedicated to the exchange of ideas, opinions, news, profiles, and links related to the study of painting at the School of Art, Aberystwyth University:

9.40 pm. Practise Session 2. 10.30 pm. ‘The night watch’. I completed uploads, notifications, emails, and registers.