I often wander cautiously around art galleries, often in the shadow of sincere tourists with their hands behind their back, face poised in a wonderfully intellectual and pensive expression. I feel inclined to understand the vast collections before me as they seemingly are, and marvel at the sense of x throughout the complexity of y. But now the time has come for me to admit it- I really don’t know very much at all about art.

From my experience and understanding, any emotion or expression of the heart and soul can exhibit itself in the form of art, be that a painting, sculpture, pop song or Shakespeare play. Art has been created from deep in the soul of an individual and is a highly personal expression of emotions. Artists are sensitive and aware, the most popular work they create can often be the pieces that took comparatively no conscious thought or time at all. Whilst we poor A Level students pour over a Dickinson poem or Shakespeare play, annotating it as best we can, the truth often remains; perhaps the artist has less of an idea than you.

Thought and Art are two very different concepts, and although intertwined and linked in some ways, they are worlds apart in others. Your talents are not created by a thought process necessarily. Talents are a gift of expression, a method of escape or way of life. It is also often the case that we cannot articulate our thoughts out loud. If someone asks you to explain your thoughts, I doubt many of us would be able to explain the exact workings of your mind. The fact remains, why are we so hard on ourselves (and our A Level students!). If art wasn’t created from a conscious thought, then why must we use conscious thought to explain it? By employing this form of explanation, it is in a sense a form of blasphemy towards the ‘meaning’ of art. Has anyone ever asked you what love is? Or what faith is? Or why you like the colour blue? These are phenomenons that are not explained. They are the great rhetoric of our world and existence. The artists use this absence of judgment to explore they very core of their being. Why then are we so set on judgment, criticism and intellect in this world of love, imagination and wonder?

Allow yourself to spend time being with the art. Think about how the art affects you naturally and how you respond to it. Of course it is inevitable that we will have to explain art now and again in an attempt to please people or even to lure them in to our vibrant world, but don’t allow the academic side control your opinions and emotions- only you decide whether you like Schoenberg or not. If, on the other hand, you simply want to skip through a gallery and get to the shop, that’s also fine because the space in itself is to be experienced in as many different ways as possible and in experiencing rather that studying you are perhaps closer to the art than you imagine.

Accept the little you will ever know about art and be humble. Allow faith or energy or love to come to you and accept it if it isn’t immediate. Remember too that no one decided what ‘good art’ was in the beginning. Good art is true love, true faith, an open heart and a thirst for life!