Defining art can feel like trying to capture light in a jar. Even as a life-long practicing artist, I still find myself returning to this question: What exactly is art?

It’s not as simple as pointing to a painting on the wall or a sculpture in a gallery. Art can be the spontaneous burst of color in a child’s first painting on one end of a spectrum, and a carefully crafted work shaped by years of skill and intent from a seasoned creator on the other end. But how do we distinguish a five-year-old’s enthusiastic brushstrokes from the work of a professional artist? Are they both art?
In this first article of The Collector’s Palette, we’re tackling the question, What is art? While art may defy a single definition, understanding some foundational ideas can bring us closer to appreciating what makes art art. By exploring these concepts, we’ll build a shared vocabulary that will help us not only see art better but give us the confidence to talk about and buy art.

Building Confidence Through a Shared Vocabulary
At its heart, all art is about communication and connection. Art reflects what we see, feel, and experience, and invites us to engage, interpret, and reflect. Art can tell a story, evoke emotions, or challenge us to see things from a new perspective. Some art reveals beauty, while other pieces confront us with questions or contradictions. Each artwork opens a dialogue between creator and viewer, encouraging us to search for meaning beyond the surface.
Yet navigating the 'World of Art' can be complex and confusing, even for those of us who have been immersed in the art world for a long time. Sometimes you just don't "get" a piece of art or you don't understand what the artist is trying to communicate. Sometimes you just don't connect to the artwork and the more someone tries to explain it, the more you dislike it? Art terminology can feel like a barrier, making you think twice about your choices or opinions. Having a little understanding of art language may be a simple fix.
Learning the language of art isn’t about needing an art degree so you can decode this:
“This piece is a triumph of ontological discourse, a veritable symphony of dialectical form and negative space that subverts traditional paradigms of semiotic interpretation. The artist’s deft manipulation of chromatic saturation and gestural bravura achieves an uncanny equilibrium, wherein each brushstroke serves as both a repudiation and celebration of postmodernist orthodoxy. It’s a work that not only interrogates the aesthetic object but transcends into the realm of the sublime, inviting the viewer into an ontological rupture that dissolves the binary of observer and observed.”
Giant eye roll! Turn around and walk out if you ever meet someone who talks like that. Learning the language of art is about you feeling comfortable and confident in the art world. By understanding a few key terms and concepts, I hope to help you feel more open to exploring, talking about, and selecting art for yourself.
Because ART is for everyone, Y'ALL!

The Primary Forms of Art and Their Key Terms
In the traditional art world, art forms are often divided into distinct categories, each with its own techniques, materials, and vocabulary. Understanding these primary forms and some of their associated vocabulary can help you navigate the unique qualities of each type of art.
Painting
Painting is perhaps the most familiar form, with a history dating back thousands of years. Painting, with its layers, textures, and colors, offers an invitation into the artist’s interpretation of reality. Paintings can conveys emotion, movement, and a sense of timelessness. They can be figurative, realistic, hyper-realistic, representational, abstract or semi-abstract. Paintings often encourage reflection and an immersion into the artist's vision.
Abstract – Art that doesn’t attempt to represent reality accurately but instead uses shapes, colors, forms, and gestural marks to achieve its effect. Abstract painting encourages viewers to interpret meaning through color, emotion, movement, and form, rather than recognizable objects.
Representational – Art that depicts recognizable objects from the real world, such as people, landscapes, or things. Representational painting aims to portray subjects with varying degrees of accuracy and realism, often emphasizing detail and perspective to capture the essence of the subject.
Medium – Refers to the "paint" used to create the artwork. Traditional mediums are: oil, acrylic, watercolor, or encaustic (wax). Different mediums affect the texture, color, and longevity of a piece.
Pigment - Is simply the color.
Substrate – The underlying surface or material on which a painting is created, such as: canvas, wood panel, paper, or metal. The substrate influences the texture, durability, and appearance of the finished work. Different substrates react uniquely with varying mediums, affecting absorption, pigment vibrancy, and how the piece ages over time.
Composition – How elements are arranged within a painting. Composition guides the viewer’s eye and contributes to the artwork's balance, focus, and emotional impact.
Brushwork – The visible texture and movement created by the artist’s paintbrush. Brushwork can vary from smooth to very textural (called impasto), and adds to the painting's style and energy.
Photography
Unlike painting, where artists interpret and reshape reality, photography often presents a more direct vision of a fleeting moment or a subject’s essence. Photography offers a powerful balance between documenting reality and revealing subtleties in light, emotion, and details that might otherwise go unnoticed, allowing viewers to see the extraordinary within the ordinary through an artful eye.
Exposure – The amount of light that reaches the camera sensor, affecting brightness and detail. Exposure contributes to the mood, whether it’s high contrast, soft, or shadowed.
Perspective – The angle and distance from which the photo is taken, shaping how we perceive the subject and its surroundings.
Tonal Range – The spectrum of light to dark within an image. A broad tonal range captures a variety of shades and adds richness, while a limited range may create a softer, more cohesive look.
Editing/Post-processing – Adjustments made after taking the photo. Editing can enhance color, sharpness, and composition, influencing the final impact.
Bokeh - The blurry circles that are created when lights are out of focus in an image. Or, the way the camera lens renders out-of-focus points of light.
Sculpture
Sculpture provides a tangible, three-dimensional form that we can view and even touch (depending on the piece and setting). It gives us a sense of space, weight, and volume, often inviting us to move around it to appreciate the work from multiple perspectives, grounding this art form in physicality and presence.
Form – The three-dimensional shape of the artwork. Form gives a sculpture its presence, inviting viewers to move around it and engage with it from different angles.
Texture – The surface quality, from smooth to rough, which affects how light interacts with the piece and adds to the viewer’s tactile experience.
Scale – The size of the sculpture in relation to its setting and the viewer. Scale can create an intimate experience or a larger-than-life impact.
Sculpture materials - Bronze, Marble, Clay, Wood, Steel, Glass, Plaster, Resin, Stone, Fiberglass, Ceramic, Wire.
Methods of Sculpture - Carving, Modeling, Casting, Assembling.
Drawing
Often seen as foundational, drawing uses tools like —pencil, ink, charcoal, or pastels. Drawing has a beautiful immediacy and intimacy, often capturing the raw beginnings of an idea or the artist’s direct hand on the page.
It gives us a window into the artist’s thought process, with each line and stroke offering a glimpse into a moment of creation. Drawings can be both exploratory and expressive, allowing us to see the foundation of a creative vision OR drawings can be complete renderings and considered an art object in and of itself. Drawings often speak to the essentials, showing us beauty and meaning using simpler art tools.
Line Quality – The character of a line, from thin and delicate to thick and bold. Line quality affects the drawing’s energy, mood, and emphasis, showing the artist’s hand and style.
Contour – The outline that defines the edges of a form. Contour drawing emphasizes shape and structure, often creating a clean, distinct impression of the subject.
Gestural Drawing – A quick, expressive approach that captures the essence or movement of a subject rather than details. Gesture drawing is often used in figure drawing to convey motion and energy.
Rendering – The process of adding shading, detail, and refinement to create a realistic or polished look. Rendering enhances depth and realism, showcasing the artist’s technical skill.
Chiaroscuro – The use of strong contrasts between light and dark to create drama and depth. Chiaroscuro enhances form, often giving the drawing a sculptural quality.

Printmaking
Printmaking involves transferring images from a matrix (such as a block, plate, or screen) onto paper. Printmaking often involves layers and textures that add depth, creating tactile, engaging pieces through techniques that include woodcut, etching, engraving, and lithography, while modern artists have expanded available techniques to include screen-printing. Printmaking offers a unique blend of precision and artistry with repeated impressions that retain the artist's original vision, while allowing for subtle variations between each print. Printmaking also has rich historical methods. Contemporary artists are preserving tradition while inviting new expression.
Edition – A set of identical prints. Each print in an edition is signed and numbered, indicating its place within a series.
Plate – The surface on which the artist creates the image for printing, whether it’s wood, metal, or stone.
Impression – Each individual print made from the plate. Even in editions, subtle variations make each impression unique.
Monotype - Technically, only one impression is made with a monotype. With a monotype, the print created is a singular and unique work on paper.
Ghost Print - A slightly faded impressions of the work made from a plate after the first print is taken.
Mixed Media and Collage
Mixed media and collage bring together diverse materials (paint, fabric, found objects, paper, digital elements), textures, and colors to create layers of meaning and invite unexpected connections. They give us a visual and often tactile journey of imagination. By reassembling different elements, these art forms offer a sense of discovery, showing us how seemingly unrelated pieces can come together to tell a new story. Mixed media and collage celebrate creativity without boundaries, encouraging us to see potential and beauty in the ordinary or discarded, transforming them into something fresh and thought-provoking, that often break traditional art boundaries.
Assemblage – The practice of combining different materials or objects to create a new work. Assemblage gives mixed media its layered, textured look.
Layers – The overlapping of different materials, like paper or fabric. Layers add depth, allowing the viewer to uncover new details each time they look.
Found Object – Objects that were not originally created as art but are repurposed within the piece. Found objects bring a sense of history or everyday life into the work. This art form often emphasizes the importance of sustainability.
Installation Art
Installation art immerses us in an environment, transforming space into an experience we can physically step into and explore. It gives us a sense of presence and scale, often engaging multiple senses to create a dialogue between the artwork, the space, and ourselves. Installation art allows us to participate, challenging the boundary between viewer and artwork, and inviting us to experience art as a surrounding world rather than a singular object. By altering space, installation art encourages reflection, wonder, and sometimes even interaction, making art feel alive and all-encompassing.
Site-Specific – Installations created for a particular space, often engaging with the location’s history, architecture, or community.
Immersive – Designed to engage the viewer fully, often surrounding them to create a multi-sensory experience.
Ephemeral – Works that are temporary or meant to change over time, emphasizing the experience over permanence.
Performance Art
Performance art gives us a live, unfolding experience. It brings art into the realm of time, action, and presence, often using the artist's body as a medium to convey powerful emotions, concepts, or social commentary. Performance art invites us to witness and sometimes even participate in an artistic act, creating a shared, unrepeatable moment that is as much about the experience as it is about the message. Through its immediacy and human connection, performance art challenges us to engage with art in real-time, making it visceral, personal, and dynamic.
Ephemerality – The temporary, live nature of performance art. Each performance is unique and cannot be fully replicated.
Audience Interaction – Many performance pieces invite or rely on the audience’s participation, making the viewer part of the artwork.
Body as Medium – In performance art, the artist’s body often serves as the primary medium, conveying emotion and meaning directly.
Digital Art
Digital art uses technology to create and share images, animations, and interactive pieces. It gives us an accessible and flexible way to explore creativity, with tools that allow for experimentation and precision. Digital art lets artists play with color, form, and motion in ways that aren’t always possible with traditional media, offering a fresh perspective that evolves with technology. It opens up new ways for artists and audiences to connect, making art adaptable to various formats and widely shareable.
Pixel – The smallest unit of a digital image. Pixel quality affects clarity and detail, particularly in high-resolution pieces.
Vector vs. Raster – Vector graphics can be resized without losing quality, while raster images are pixel-based. This impacts the artwork’s flexibility in digital spaces.
Resolution – The amount of detail in the image. Higher resolution allows for sharper, more detailed digital art, which is crucial for print quality.
Craft and Decorative Art
Craft and decorative art celebrate skill, tradition, and functionality, blending beauty with utility, and blurs the line between fine art and everyday life. Craft included ceramics, textiles, glasswork, jewelry, and furniture making to name a few. Its forms give us objects that enrich daily life, offering a sense of warmth, craftsmanship, and cultural heritage. Craft and decorative art connects us to the tactile, handmade, and thoughtfully designed, making art a part of our everyday.
Handcrafted – Created by hand rather than by machine, giving the piece uniqueness and a personal touch.
Functionality – Decorative art often has a practical use, like pottery, textiles, or furniture, where beauty and purpose merge.
Tradition – Many crafts are rooted in cultural traditions, which can add historical or symbolic significance to the piece.

Conclusion
Art’s many forms each give us a language for connecting with it. The vocabulary in this article is just a glimpse—a small collection of terms to open doors, spark curiosity, and deepen your experience with art. Some of the terms cross over between art forms, creating a foundational language that enhances our understanding across different types of art. This vocabulary list isn’t exhaustive, nor does it define everything art can be, but it offers a foundation for exploring, discussing, and choosing pieces that interest you. Remember, collecting art is personal; there’s no “right” way to understand or appreciate art.
In the end, the question What is art? might not even matter. What truly matters is - Is it art to you? Collecting art is about how it makes you feel, the memories the art stirs in you, and the conversations it sparks. If you love that piece of art, let that connection be the only answer you need.
Through The Collector’s Palette, we’ll be exploring the vital roles both artist and collector play in shaping and preserving our artistic and cultural legacy.
Collecting art isn’t only about owning beautiful objects—it’s also about embracing your unique role as a cultural steward. As an art collector, you’re part of something bigger - a whole world of preserving creativity, history, and human expression for future generations.
I’m excited to be your guide through this journey - helping you to understand art better, expanding your connection to art, and empowering you to enjoy the thrill of discovering artworks that resonate within your soul in addition to beautifying your environment.
* See below for more articles to expand your understanding of art and art collecting.
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Very helpful introduction to the terminology of art. Thank you.
This is a great foundation for understandding art and its vocabulary. Well done!