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, I often wondered? 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.
Despite the research I did, 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 these paintings to visit their websites and see more of their work.
