You glance across a crowded room and suddenly, there it is, your dream come true.  You could be in a gallery, at an art in the park, at your local library exhibition, or at a Studio Tour & Art Sale.  It is just exquisite.  You have to have it.  You have looked at so many original paintings over so many years and none of them has struck you the way this particular one does.  You go up to it and it becomes even more desirable.  What is it that this painting has, that all the rest do not?  What is the hook that the artist has managed to build into the art work?

Interestingly enough it is often not even the subject matter that weaves a spell on the viewer, although of course, if waterfalls with birch on a rocky terrain captures your imagination or spark a poignant memory, you will examine the piece more closely.  However, it is oftentimes the secret scaffolding that the artist works with that wins the viewer over.  In fact, as might be said in Newfoundland, “it makes me no never mind” whether it is an abstract, figurative, landscape or floral work.

So what then you ask?  It is a case of dominance – there is a dominant color or color theme and this color theme is repeated around the painting to lead the eye around the picture plane and not let it escape.  And, often it is not a multitude of colors, but perhaps a more subtle grouping of colors, harmonious colors, analogous colors, hues next to each other on the color wheel or for a major impact, complementary colors which are the colors on the opposite sides of the color wheel. Thinking in terms of holidays makes it easy:  Easter is yellow and purple, Christmas is red and green and half of Halloween is orange, then add blue.

Perhaps the artist has researched the colors of the season by visiting model homes or looking at the newest expensive paint chips at a ritzy paint store and found exactly the right ones that you have used in your new renovation, addition, or furniture choice.  Certainly the colors of a season are no accident and the home industries work closely together so that they too present clients with “the perfect color choices that work so well together”.

The composition of a painting is of paramount importance.  There needs to be a dominant value, a light, dark or mid tone.  There needs to a dominant shape within the work that is a largest, a medium and a small shape.  Furthermore, there are negative and positive spaces to put into the mix and the edges of shapes can be hard, soft and have interesting incidents along the lines surrounding the shapes.

The direction of the work counts:  there needs to be a dominant direction, whether vertical, horizontal or diagonal.  Not only does a painting need to have dominant features, but it also needs to have just a bit of conflict, such as the diagonal lines in a predominantly horizontal art work.

This leads the artist to devise secret passageways to a carefully built in focal point.  If the viewer follows a diagonal secret path up into the distance and there is nothing there, obviously the viewer is disappointed.  A focal point or focal area is certainly one element that captures the viewer and causes that viewer to fall in love with a painting.  Focal points can be placed in one of four quadrants, but not really recommended right in the center of a painting. They are sometimes living things, sometimes the point of greatest contrast, the biggest, the brightest colour, the destination in a painting that all secret passageways lead to.

And what is the most fascinating element is that the price point is most frequently the last piece of the puzzle.  If the love is great enough the art work will go home with that viewer no matter what it takes to get it.  Many artists have payment plans to help collectors acquire their original art and all the serious client has to do is ask.

It, however, remains a mystery how the creative process works for the artist of your favourite painting and the completed art work has conjured up the magical combination of all the elements and principles of art to produce an exceptional original painting that strikes you, the viewer, with a desire to have that piece. So, love at first sight is certainly valid in the selection of a painting.  After all, we know what we like, we just may not know why.

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