Lynne Barrett-Lee's acclaimed novels Julia Gets a Life, Virtual Stranger, One Day, Someday and Straight On Till Morning have made her one of our best known novelists. She is an energetic and charming woman with an infectious enthusiasm for the arts.

What draws you to a work of art?
Try as I might, that is almost impossible to define. Which is, I guess, why art is such a wonderful thing. Sometimes you glance at a painting and it just seems to suck you in. It could be a landscape or a portrait, an intricately crafted old master or an exuberant explosion of colour - who cares? If it presses the right buttons it really doesn't matter. As with falling in love, it's best approached with the heart and not the head.

Has painting ever been one of your pastimes? Always. I was the artist in the family, the one with the set of pastels, the oil paints, the pads of cartridge paper and the brushes. My father, who was a builder, used to cover old pieces of hardboard with white emulsion for me, so I had something to paint all my masterpieces on. Embarrassingly, my mother still has one hanging on her wall. I do very little drawing and painting at the moment, because all my creative energies are channelled into my writing. But if I ever feel I've achieved enough to take six months off, I still have all my pencils, and my palettes and my inks.

Do you have a favourite artist?
Several. I love Cezanne for his use of colour, and the Impressionists generally. 'Running Away with the Hairdresser', by the Welsh artist, Kevin Sinnott, blew me away when I first moved here. So much so that I even featured the painting in one of my novels. I am also enthralled by Lawrence Alma Tadema for the beauty and light and sheer brilliance of his work. In New York last year I found myself unable to tear myself away from a painting called 'Springtime' by the nineteenth century artist, Pierre-Auguste Cot. The original is about three metres high, but the print I have at home is
a more manageable two.