In 1979 the Works of Art Committee comissioned Alun Leach-Jones to paint a mural on a wall in the Science Undercroft. This work is the final study for the mural which was painted in December of the same year. The collage and the mural are strikingly similar. Even the irregular white lines where the paper was torn in the making of the collage are reproduced in the mural. Alun Leach-Jones was born in Wales in 1937, and arrived in Australia in 1960. He came to Australia in a period when Hard-Edge Abstraction was becoming popular and describes his artwork as being part logical and part intuitive. Leach-Jones' work represents moments in the life of the artist, thus it may be seen as a kind of abstract self-portraiture. He dismisses figurative painting as inadequate to express what he is trying to express, preferring to deal directly with feeling and experience through abstract shapes and vivid colour. His images are about states of mind, modes of behaviour and ways of thinking.