Changed thinking

One of my students told me this week, as he finished his A level exam, how he hadn't thought that he would be painting in the way he is when he first started the A level course nearly 2 years ago. He arrived in our 6th form as great fan of John Singer Sargent but he finishes it as an abstracting painter in the mould of Hughie O'Donoghue

There is a connection of course in an interest in surface, in texture, in what paint can do and achieve. There is also a difference in my student who has moved from the admiration of technical facility in creating illusions of surface to an appreciation of the allusive alchemic qualities of paint to create a metaphor for earthy empathatic feeling.

(Does that make sense?)