Here I am in the garden with my artist. Like many women she doesn't always feel safe painting in the open air, and like many others she lived with a chronic health condition that meant in the last few years it wasn't always possible for her to get outside to paint. Fitting in art around work commitments can be tricky for many, and after years of living in tiny flats, being able to have her own patio space to work on is wonderful, as she can pop out for an hour or so after work to relax. She became interested in coloured pencils, inktense pencils, tinted charcoal and carbon, and the possibilities of combining them. No doubt some of her work would be labelled 'tight' by some who feel their way is the best way and everyone should 'loosen up', but there are times when getting lost in the detail of a pet portrait, archaeological illustration, or botanic drawing and drawing every detail can be great for a meditative calming experience as well as serving the purpose of accurately recording. At other times, her work is looser, splatting around some inktense, with an abandon and lack of mixing that would no doubt outrage some of the more staid, pompous and traditionalist artists who feel everything should be done with a limited palette, the gunge and sludge from the bottom of an old oil palette, and nothing else will do. Sometimes, a splash of unmixed, bold ready-mixed sap green, a dash of vibrant turquoise, and a splatter of crimson is just fun and enjoyable, nothing more, nothing less than just enjoying colour. I help choose the pencils and brushes, sniffing to choose, and often my choices would be sniffed at by some because they help my artist to break 'rules', such as using opaque white in a watercolour, black for linework in watercolour, and my colour choices are often influenced not by some stuffy and outdated need to imitate old dark paintings found in dusty antique shops, but lively, bright colours of living things around me and the artwork of countries I have been lucky enough to work in that have a range of inspiration beyond the narrow confines of many formally trained elderly British artists. They are my paints, sniffed out by me, and if I choose to use them undiluted, unmixed, and in a manner others find don't meet their view of what is 'technically' correct, well it may surprise them to find we don't all aspire to be like them. I just stick my paw straight in the paint sometimes, walk all over the table and enjoy doing so. If I enjoy the experience and process, that is fine. If I don't, I will try again tomorrow. If people don't like it, that is their choice, but perhaps they should think carefully about how that is expressed and consider if there is anything they could learn from the old saying of not saying anything if you can't say anything nice. Painting, drawing, colour, pattern, texture, form, all of these can be experienced, depicted and enjoyed in many ways and there is no one 'very good' or 'technically better' viewpoint, otherwise the wonderful art produced by many varied cultures throughout history just wouldn't exist and the world would be a worse place for it. Many western artists who are now valued as being at the forefront of new movements were misunderstood at the height of their creativity, such as Van Gogh who was seen as 'childish'. Many cultures have totally different ways of composing paintings, as seen in Asian art, viewing planes, such as seen in native Canadian art, and using colour and pattern, as seen in cultures from aboriginal Australia to Morocco. All of these are ways of viewing the world, processing it, and depicting it, and nobody has the right to put any of it down because they view their own way as the only way.