I continued to work with plaster and colour, not very successfully. There was a lot of pressure at the College. One was very aware of the previous generations who had been and gone and the quality of the people who taught there. Though it didn't help me much when my first tutor introduced himself to me by saying, ' You've had more exhibitions than me.' He was a twerp whose name I have conveniently forgotten, Chris something I think.
A lot of students stopped painting and started drawing, trying to gain skills they felt they should have to justify their place at one of the best art schools in the world; others worked manically, churning out painting after painting, trying to achieve something through sheer volume. I was fiddling around with bits of old ideas and techniques from the past.
I had an awkward relationship with the tutors.
Early in the first term Prof. Peter DeFrancia, invited me and a couple of other students out to a wine bar, it was a thing he did. I got pissed and started talking arrogant rubbish, never invited again. During one tutorial, with DeFrancia and two others, we were discussing some large drawings I’d made, mixed media, part etching, oil stick, liquid light painted on bits to take a photo image. One of them had a Rambeau quote in French. The three of them, all smoking pipes, continued the tutorial in French. I don’t speak French. Which sums up my time there, I didn’t speak their language.

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On the left is a piece I made in Morroco, a story when I get round to it,