What even is fine art…?

Buddy and I were out on the trail this morning, navigating the mud bogs and slippery logs — me muttering about balance and bad decisions, him trotting along like he’s on a catwalk made of moss. Somewhere between a near face-plant and a heroic stick retrieval, I found myself thinking (as one does when slightly damp and covered in forest debris): what even is fine art, anyway?

Some folks say true fine art is something done by hand — as in painting, sculpting, drawing. You know, the “real” stuff. But here’s the thing: my photography is done by hand, too. My tools just happen to have buttons, glass, and pixels. I compose, adjust, process, and build the final image with my hands and eyes and a fair bit of stubbornness.

Some people call that “manipulation.” But let’s be honest — isn’t using a paintbrush manipulation too? You’re literally moving pigment around with bristles to make an image. Same with clay, wood, metal — it’s all manipulation. Just… different tools.

And perhaps I’m quibbling here... but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Every artist manipulates their medium to express something — to make you feel something.

I’ve seen incredible pieces of turned wood that take breathtaking skill and imagination to create. That’s not just craftsmanship — that’s art. It goes beyond the technical and lands squarely in the emotional.

Sure, it’s a slippery slope. But once you start digging into fine art, craftsmanship, visual arts, artisan work, ceramics, sculpture — where’s the dividing line, really? The so-called “experts” (whoever they are this week) seem to love drawing those lines. Sometimes it feels like they’re telling us how to think, what to value, and what to hang on a white wall. And that, frankly, annoys the mud off my boots.

They’ll tell us that Jean-Michel Basquiat (or insert any other revered name) creates fine art — and sure, maybe he does. But there’s also a huge population of us who look at it and think, “What the actual…?”

Anyway. I digress.

Maybe the point of this whole muddy musing is that art is subjective. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, no matter what the “experts” (and we all know what an expert is — X is an unknown quantity and a spurt is a drip under pressure) might say.

Art is what’s created — and what it makes you feel. Everything else is just noise.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just step down off my soap box… it’s a little slippery from all that trail mud.

And as always, Buddy would like to remind you that while I’m pondering the meaning of fine art, he’s just wondering if there’s a treat in my pocket. (Spoiler: there always is.)