8.45 am. On arrival:

Second year painters and British Landscape were on the menu for the day. Either I’m uneasy or there’s a foul and unsettling ‘air’ abroad. 9.00 am. Tutorials commenced:

Some principles and observations derived from today’s engagements:

• What is often conspicuously absent in undergraduate study is a sense of urgency … of imperative. ‘Carpe diem’, as they say.
• A plan of action may have certain uncomfortable implications for the artist. Maturity is the determination to face them, whatever their demands.
• Success will follow failure will follow success will follow … like cloudy and sunny days. Reckon on it!
• If something can be neither added to nor subtracted from a painting’s composition in order to improve the whole, then the work has reached its optimum. Leave it.
• Your willingness to work hard is in direct proportion to your desire to succeed.
• A lack of confidence is more often instilled into us by bad teachers, insensitive family members, and false friends in the past, rather than a disposition that we’ve cultivated by ourselves alone.
• Don’t overload a single image with too many ideas. Learn to parcel them out.
• Add to knowledge, discernment.
• Add to discernment, the ability define and articulate.

11.00 am. The British Landscape lecture on ‘The Formal Garden’:

12.00 am. Further tutorials.

2.00 pm. A week off from Art in Wales duties; the hour was filled with pastoral and dissertationary advice sessions. Anyone who can pull-off wearing odd socks with style is good in my books:

3.00 pm. A final fine art tutorial. The ghost, seen on the staircase:

3.30 pm. Tidy-up admin: desk-top (real and virtual) clearance, a little social media promotion, emailism, and a reflection on the day that’s been.

7.30 pm. My other life: Holy Trinity Church Committee: