Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Art is subjective - but it is also immersive. I try and paint all my finished work to the best of my ability but technique is such a small part of the appeal of a work. Anyone who has been through formal training and has had years of experience will have achieved excellence in mixing colour, applying it to the ground, blending, draughtsmanship etc but that is not the point. From this perspective Leonardo and Picasso are equals and no more excellent than many other artists.
What makes a picture appeal, in my opinion, is very similar to house buying process. As a buyer the first thing you are considering is the neighbourhood. If I visit a gallery I am generally not interested in the religious iconography or generally formal portraiture. It doesn't do it for me when I see a room full of gilt (or is it guilt?) or stuffy black, white and grey images of the great and the good with beautifully painted ruffs. Show me some Renaissance work, pre-Raphaelites, Impressionists or most things modern and I'll take a step forward.
So you are in the neighbourhood and the estate agent gives you a wad of various house details - you can't possibly invest the time to see them all. The first scan through the photographs gives you an impression of 'curb appeal'. Galleries will curate their collections into periods and styles but once you are in a room and just scan round there will be some paintings which instantly stand out to you - and possibly only you. So what does the individual painting initially look like when you see it 30 yards away? What about when you stand back from it at 6 feet. Some images just pop in their own right, others make you curious so that you want to go a little closer and either examine the painting surface in more detail or read the little card to understand more about the person that created it.
So you finally arrange a viewing with the estate agent and after reading the details you find yourself at the front door. You have expectations and there is still a whole other level of perception and emotion which decide which is the one. Some paintings work well, and were even designed to work well, at a distance. There are the famous perspective paintings which work terribly unless you are stood on the stairs looking up. Sometimes it is a colour palette that just works for you or a portrayal of light which takes you to your happiest times. The subject matter plays a part - I'm not a fan of anything too over-sentimental and sometimes the upclose view can reveal too much blusher on the peasants. The tiny details can be the deciding factor - "I just love the little dog peeking round the chair/the cutesy dog is so unnecessary" or famously the tiny dots of light on the pupils. I personally love when a particularly deft application of paint in one stroke creates a figure or glimpses of light. I start at 6 feet away identifying what I like and then go in close to try and work out how they have achieved it. The flip side of this is looking at the things you don't like. I often look at the periphery of a painting and wonder whether the 'underpainting' is laziness or an attempt to keep focus. I personally like all of the painting to have been worked to contribute to the overall effect but sometimes one area of a painting will jar to me. Even the framing can be the deciding factor.
And finally comes the heart over head decision - the shortlist is those houses where you can imagine living but with most families some of those will be ruled out because the subjectiveness means there is no unanimity. "The one" is the most subjective decision of all. The decision factor for the one house that you finally pick can be about the most ridiculously small detail that just appeals. The real weighting applied to that factor never appeared in the logically-thought-through criteria at the start. With a painting its just the same. Imagine you'd got a single place to put a piece of feature art which you all have to agree on?
And yet all this thought process and useful feedback is never or seldom shared with the estate agent and almost never with the unsuccessful homeowners. As a seller you know how dispiriting it can be to have viewings that never result in offers. Even more dispiriting is a viewing where the feedback is incredibly positive so that you are expecting a call to the estate agent from the driveway. Of course there is competition but there will also be some golden feedback which would allow you to set your house up better for the next prospective buyer. British folk are famous for being uncomfortable with negative feedback; although we are getting better at complaints.
As an artist I'd love more constructive feedback but it is really hard to achieve. One of the better ways is to stand away from the paintings at an exhibition or art show and watch where viewers linger and what they point at. Occasionally you are lucky enough to overhear comments as they walk away. It's not necessarily something that will change the way I paint but it may alter the way I present my work and evaluate composition and colour for future paintings. I would absolutely not take it personally and I think almost all artists are the same. If you can, try and give feedback with one more sentence attached.
For the painting above for example - "It's Ok - I like the colour scheme but I can't countenance that face looking down on me all day long"
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