When I can feel it

Last week, as I was working at Kobo Gallery, a collector asked me: ‘When do you know an artwork is good?’

Often we spend our lives suppressing what we feel. As children we’re taught it’s not proper. Instead of learning to deal with our feelings, we learn what is socially accepted and how to keep the façade up while pushing what we really feel down. Even though psychologists say that it’s “better to express and resolve negative emotions in a healthy way than to tamp them down”, the latter is usually exactly what we do. Or have to in order to feel acceptance. Often this process happens subconsciously.

I believe that art can make us feel not only more present but also more alive. Sometimes less alone. It can be hard to verbalize why certain pieces, abstract or representational, contemporary or historical, just move us. Why do certain pieces stop us dead in our tracks, come up in our thoughts for days, or weeks? And others we can pass by without taking a second look? And why does one piece have a drastic effect on one person but none on another? I will not pretend to have the answers to any of these, but understanding our psychological complexities will surely be interesting.

Most of the work that I find unforgettable is work I can feel. Regardless of the subject matter, if it provokes an emotional reaction in me, I truly feel more alive. I’ve recently sorted through 800+ images from 3 photo shoots that I did during the last month and kept asking myself what makes one photo better than the next? And what is it that makes those few great?

I can feel it. And often not just that I can feel but perhaps that what I’ve for so long not allowed myself to feel/express.