Lydia paints landscapes en plein air, sometimes adding to them in the studio. She uses acrylics and pastels and occasionally charcoal. She likes the immediacy of the first sketches, which often have more of a sense of place than any finished work. Lydia returns to the same landscape frequently, so that paintings have layers of memory from other seasons too. She is keen to appreciate the local landscape, which never turns out to be ordinary on closer inspection. “Paint is a great medium to capture the energy and hope in the natural world”, she says.