I don't really know how to "art"...

When it comes to artistic ability in my family I missed out; Give me paint brushes and paints, pencils or charcoal and I'll make a mess that won't resemble what I set out to create one little bit. I paint and draw like a 4 year old. I just can't seem to get it right.

I don't take great photos like my brothers do and if one happens to turn out ok it's probably more by fluke than design. It's always been this way. Someone once said to me that creating music is art and because I can play the piano they said I was artistic but I tend to disagree because I'm not really creating it, the composer did that; I'm just replicating it. That's my opinion anyway. I write a little creatively at times I guess so maybe that's my small contribution to the pool of family-creativeness? Either way, I'm ok with it; I don't lay awake at night wishing I was artistic.

The image you see above was taken by me and whilst it's probably not composed well, or the shadows are not used to their advantage, or maybe the aperture of the F-Stop wasn't exposure-compensated to the shutter speed in relation to the ISO and depth of field...Or some such thing...That's right...I have no idea! If you can't tell what it is the image is of a marina here in Adelaide with the setting sun behind. I've seen worse images and have certainly seen much better...But this one is mine and so is a keeper; For me at least.

The image you see to the right is a photograph of a painting done by my dad in 1996. It's of a marina in Cairns, not an exact representation of it, just a composition made up from it.

The painting is about 1.5x1.0 metres in size and hangs in one of the bedrooms in my home. It's acrylic on stretched canvas and is one of my favourite paintings. It's probably difficult to see the detail in it from this photo but I think you get the idea. My dad suffers with dementia now and does not paint anymore unfortunately. This makes his work a little more valuable as he won't produce anymore. I'm pretty proud of it, his work, and I'm really pleased I have the ability to own some and to have memories as a child of watching him create his work from blank canvas to what I see as a masterpiece.

I'm not arty, that's established already, but I understand what looks good to me, what appeals, and what doesn't. There's some great photographers on steemit for instance and whilst maybe the fine nuances of their photographs are lost on me I can still look at a photo and say, "hey, that appeals to me and I like it." I don't think I need to have a PhD in art to know what I like.

We all have different tastes fortunately and tend to like different things. Some, for instance, may feel that the painting Blue Poles painted by Jackson Pollock and worth an estimated $350 million dollars is awesome...I reckon it looks like something I could create if I had a spare 30 minutes and some paints...Yeah, I know, ambitious of me right? I guess what I really mean is that the difference of good art versus bad art is really up to the beholder.

I'll never create great artwork but it's doesn't prevent me appreciating it and knowing what appeals to me and does not. Sure, I may not completely understand a piece but isn't that one of the cool things about life? We don't have to understand a thing to like it.