The saying ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ is one that holds true when it comes to my appreciation of art. I have very particular tastes and it drives my wife crazy.

Whenever we redo a room and look at decorating the walls, my wife focuses on colour. She’ll find a nice painting or photograph and either take a picture of it to send to me, or she buys it she keeps the receipt, knowing full well that I might see it and hate it. This isn’t the most annoying attribute I have, but it certainly ranks high up in the annoying scale. It’s not that my wife is bringing home artwork that is ugly, it’s that I will look at it and instantly see something I don’t like.

I think part of it comes from years of taking photographs. When I look through the lens of a camera, I want there to be balance. Balance of lighting and exposure, balance of composition, balance of colour. That doesn’t mean symmetry and it doesn’t mean colour coordination. In fact, I like when a picture is able to break the rules of photography. For instance, it is best to follow the rule of 3rds in photos, placing key items in the image on the quadrant lines of a photo cut into 9 rectangles, 1/3 lines both horizontally and vertically. But there still has to be balance they way I described above, especially when that rule is broken.

My lack of appreciation for a work of art can be intellectual, where I think the image lacks balance in a specific way, and my lack of appreciation can also be visceral. I can look at a painting and the entire aesthetic bugs me… or in the same way an image can speak to me, and I love it.

That said, I don’t consider myself an art critic and I don’t go around telling friends that their choice of art work is ugly. But at home, I don’t want to look at a painting or photograph that I can’t appreciate and admire.

As I said, I know part of this pickiness comes from taking photos, but I wonder if the aesthetic I appreciate is something that others would agree with or if my art appreciation is strictly in the eye of this beholder?

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PS. It has taken my wife over 20 years to stop me from buying my own clothes and now I get compliments all the time… that never happened with things I purchased for myself. My pickiness doesn’t make me necessarily think I have good taste. 🙂