What Makes it Art?

My middle daughter, a self-taught art history aficionado, taught me to look at art differently than I had.

She notices things that would never occur to me. A small figure in the background who is actually a main character in the painting’s narrative. A detail in someone’s hand. A colour that marks the emergence of a new era of pigments. The time and attention she takes to fully appreciate the art makes me embarrassed by my excited, “Now this piece speaks to me!”

Since the arrival of the Pepin Designs coats to our store, I have been thinking about what actually makes something art.

A few months ago, I purchased a numbered photograph from one of our customers, Monique Campbell. It is an image she captured on a Havana street of a woman on stilts walking along a cobblestone road, in the shadow of pastel buildings. The woman seems to rise above the mundane. She looks calm, despite the precariousness of her perch.

"Havana Stilt Walker" by Monique Campbell

When I look at that photograph, I feel steadier. I think about perspective. I think about the possibility of lifting yourself without disengaging from the world entirely. I do not know whether that is what Monique intended. It is simply what happens in me when I see it. That feeling is what makes it art to me.

In my home, there is also a framed print of two parrots perched on a branch. I am fairly certain it is not an original. It does not carry a message that I can decode. It just makes me happy. Every time I pass it, I feel a small warmth. That feels like enough. Does that make it “art”?

When my children were growing up, we had a reproduction of Lady Lochnaw hanging in our house. Years later, we saw the original in person at the Edinburgh Art Museum. It was only after my children were adults that I learned my eldest daughter used to sit in the dining room and chat with the portrait. That painting has become part of her interior landscape. It shapes her now. Does that make the reproduction "real" art”?

John Singer Sargent, Gertrude Vernon, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (1864-1932)

Recently, we began carrying outerwear by an artisan from Quebec at sariKNOTsari. I first discovered his work at the One of a Kind show in Toronto and would return each year to treat myself to one of his pieces. The way he combines colour and texture brings me joy. Finding a special detail like a hand-painted leather button or a trim hidden under a hem is like a treasure hunt. My inner child laughs. I am happy. Is the coat that inspires that happiness art?

When we started sharing images of Pepin’s work, the reactions were varied. Some people saw his vision. Others saw something unpolished. A few described the pieces as patchy or haphazard. I noticed how differently people were responding to the same object.

It made me wonder whether art is less about the object itself and more about what we allow ourselves to experience in its presence.

Even nature can feel like art when we slow down enough to let it. Maybe that’s why there are so many paintings of a tree in a forest or a sunset over a lake. Your chest expands, your breathing slows, and you are uplifted.

When I look at the photograph of the woman on stilts, I feel lifted. When I wear one of Pepin’s coats, I feel a kind of permission to be visible. When my daughter stood in front of Lady Lucknow, she felt accompanied.

Those feelings are real. Inspired by art. So how general can my definition of art be?

I am beginning to think that art might simply be whatever invites us to feel something honestly. It does not have to be universally admired. It does not have to be understood the same way by everyone.

It just has to meet us where we are and take us a little further on our journey.