What is art…and how can you tell the good from the bad? Well, I’m glad I asked but I haven’t a clue about the answer. It’s like asking what punk is, there’s no straight answer. We all have our own ideas of what art means to us – very different ideas.

The first thing 90% of people say to me when they hear I ‘do art’ is, “Oh that must be great, I can’t draw a straight line.” I haven’t had to draw too many straight lines in my life and I’m not sure just how vital that particular skill is. In fact, up until I painted the restored horse-drawn caravan I talked about last time, I had never needed to do anything even resembling a straight line. Yes, I did technical drawings at school but I had a handy little instrument called a ruler to help me with those.

“I can’t draw a straight line.” That conjures up images of school and maybe for a lot of people, that’s the last time they thought about art so when confronted with the notion again, they go right back there as their point of reference. We should think a little bigger though. Art can be anything, absolutely anything and just because you don’t like something, that doesn’t mean it’s not art. It’s just not for you.

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