What Makes People Love Art

A painting can be technically “good” and still fall flat the moment someone stands in front of it. I’m chasing something harder: the instant connection that makes a viewer pause, feel, and lean in. From my artist table, I share how I think about building abstract landscapes, surreal scenery, and Art Deco inspired designs so they land with real impact. 

We dig into the question every creator eventually faces: what attracts people to art? I talk about how my work shifted over time from cars and buildings to broader subjects, and why different people are drawn to different looks. If you’ve ever wondered why one piece gets all the attention while another gets ignored, this is a practical way to start noticing what your audience is responding to. 

Color theory is the backbone of that response. I break down why the placement of color on the canvas matters as much as the colors themselves, and why “just blending paint and hoping” rarely creates a strong composition. Golds, greens, whites, yellows, blacks, purples, and blues can all work, but the right mixtures, blends, and texture choices are what bring the whole design together. 

The biggest takeaway is an artist mindset shift: learn to see like a buyer. I share how I use feedback from collectors to refine my work and create paintings people can truly connect with. If this resonates, subscribe, share the show with a creator friend, and leave a review so more artists can find it.

Transcript

Inside The Artist Table

Why Color Placement Matters

Seeing Art Like A Buyer

Using Feedback To Improve

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Hello, and I hope you're having a great night. It's a beautiful day outside. Um, you got a quick glimpse into one of my artist tables and some of the tools and paintbrushes and equipment that I use to put um designs together to create landscapes and abstracts and um surreal type scenery and um bring in uh Art Deco type designs and things of that nature. The piece that's always interesting is what people talk about is what attracts people to art, you know, what is the attraction, and that's something that I work hard at to try to figure out because what is it that they're looking for, what uh uh pieces interest them, and uh what is the combination in my personal uh case and the way I do my art, I've always created all types of designs. I started with um designing cars and buildings and um uh elaborate landscapes and uh portraits and things of that nature. And then uh as the years went by, I found out that people have different tastes and they're attracted to different things. And I think one of the key uh elements to that is the colors that you use on the uh, in my case on the canvas. So whether it's bright colors, whether it's a sky, um, whether it's um trees and scenery, whether it's putting buildings in a certain abstract design, uh, whether it's um using lines and cuts, um, it has it has an interesting process to it. And one of the pieces behind me is more of a vertical type approach. And you can see the color combination used here. A lot of different colors, but the placement of the colors on the canvas is the absolute key to the piece. Because you can't just take, you know, the color black or several titanium black, uh pure black, you can't take those colors and just start blending them on a canvas and hope that something will come out of it, hope the design will uh foster some unbelievable uh appreciation for the piece. And so using colors, whether it's the golds, the greens, the whites, the yellows, the blacks, the purples, the blues, and then using the right combination and the right mixture and the right blends and the right texture, and bringing them together just right on the canvas is the key. And so for all the creators out there, we have to put ourselves in the position of a buyer of someone that loves art, that has an interest in art, and we have to visualize what they're actually seeing and how will they connect to each one of our paintings or each one of our designs or each one of our creations or each one of our pieces of glass or metal or wood or um uh drawings, whatever the case may be. Because you have to work hard to get the creation just right, but you have to appreciate what the customers are looking at and understand the visualization between the piece and the customer. And so that's what I try to imagine is what is the customer actually seeing in any one of my pieces? And can they connect to it? And can they feel something from it? And then can they actually feel the paint come off the canvas and travel in the space that they're standing in? And can they actually connect to that? So keep working hard, keep making art, keep creating things, and treat keep connecting to your audience and and look for what they're seeing that you're not seeing. Because I had a lot of input from uh my buyers who have said, you know, Dave, I like this, but this other design I wasn't crazy about. And listen to them and hear what they're saying because it helps you create the types of art and the types of things that they're interested in. Have a wonderful night.