Is it right for anyone to criticize art?

Isn't beauty in the eyes of the beholder?

I've always been fascinated by the idea of creative criticism. How can you make a living critiquing art? How do you know what to look for, what makes a painting good or mediocre or brilliant? Because I’m lucky enough to have friends who are artists and because I worked for many years with highly creative people, I was driven to find out more about the world of art criticism and, in my novel, The Way Things Fall, I decided this should be the career of the female protagonist, Rachel.

In all three of my novels, painters and paintings feature prominently. In The Way Things Fall, Steven an up-and-coming Canadian artist, is one of the chief male characters. He reappears in a supporting role in In Love With the Night. My third novel, A Long Walk With Fate, concerns Aiden, a young man who is plucked from his impoverished existence in Vancouver and thrust into a whole new world of strange experiences before realizing the true promise of his enormous creative talent.

Despite the research I have done for these novels, I cannot personally claim to have any expertise in this area. To me, a painting should make you catch your breath, or it should seduce you, draw you in closer, make you forget where you are.

Displayed on this page are some of the paintings in my home that do exactly that for me. They are the work of very good artist friends - Gary Hesketh and Rhoda Payne in Canada and Alain Lélé in France. Click on any of these paintings to visit their websites and see more of their work.