Her respect for the art of the past and her place among its heirs is manifest in her choice of subjects: the time-honoured genres of portraiture and domestic scenes, landscape and still-life. It is also evident in the paramount importance she attaches to nature, and in her commitment to self-improvement through a repeated and arduous process of looking, a process which is at the heart of the figurative tradition, bringing to mind the rigorously self-critical approach of Degas. Moreoever, like many past masters of this tradition - Degas, Fantin Latour or Chardin for instance, with each of whom her art has affinities, although she would blush at the comparison - Patrick returns repeatedly to the same subjects (even, frequently, to the same objects: a particular lustreware teacup, the magnolia tree in her garden, or indeed her own features).