Summer is finally here and brings its usual happy traditions and pleasures, with the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition one of them. Mind you, if I had taken Waldemar Januszczak’s review in the Sunday Times’ Culture magazine at face value (‘This ugly old beast wants putting down’, June 13), I may not have bothered visiting this year. And whilst I agree with one of his concerns, and can’t help but feel uncomfortable about the number of hopeful amateur painters who sent in works (over 11,000 entries were received this year), compared to the percentage of those who actually succeed in getting their work included out of the total 1,267 exhibits, there are many other positives about this annual UK art fest that make a visit worthwhile. For one thing, the RA Summer Show offers a unique opportunity to see a huge range of art across an incredibly broad spectrum, in one place. Of course one argument is that much of this work isn’t necessarily the best on offer from many of its participants, who choose to save their best work for their private gallery shows. But it does allow visitors to spend time engaging with work they wouldn’t normally seek out, whilst also enjoying work with which they feel a more natural affinity. Some highlights for me include the abundance of abstract work at its most exuberant. Here I must declare my personal interest, as I studied painting in the late 1970s when abstraction was a predominant force. It’s good to see its enduring strength in the work of new Royal Academician Mali Morris, one of my painting tutors from that period, and interesting to see her work in the tiny Small Weston Room, small in scale and amongst all the other smaller works where representational art is reasserted, as well as large in scale and hung throughout the larger galleries. I loved Gillian Ayres’ vibrant abstract oils dominating gallery 111, one of which was shortlisted but not chosen for this year’s Wollaston Award for the most distinguished work in the show – what amazing energy and celebratory quality from an artist who turned 80 this year. But figurative art is also upheld – albeit appearing in greater representation later on in the exhibition – and for me the gallery with the greatest ‘wow’ factor is number 1X, dominated by the theme of landscape and containing some monumental photographic and computergenerated images of Yorkshire by David Hockney, amongst some stunning Fred Cuming oils, whilst my favourite drawings in the exhibition have got to be the muscular charcoal figure drawings by Sir Anthony Caro in gallery V. So, in this exhibition, and throughout the summer months, and whether you work inside or outdoors, the optimism and inspirational qualities of art continue to thrive. Indulge.