I’m not sure I like art. Probably because I don’t understand art, at least what art is supposed to be. Paintings? Sculptures? Opera? Ballet? Symphonies? Jazz? All of the above? Maybe because I have always been a bit intimidated by art, especially when people get heavy and refer to art and culture in the same breath. I’m not sure I understand culture.

I’m not sure I like art. Probably because I don’t understand art, at least what art is supposed to be. Paintings? Sculptures? Opera? Ballet? Symphonies? Jazz? All of the above? Maybe because I have always been a bit intimidated by art, especially when people get heavy and refer to art and culture in the same breath. I’m not sure I understand culture.

My father loved art—paintings, specifically. He would sit for hours on uncomfortable, wooden museum benches, ankles crossed and hands clasped, eyes riveted, gawking. I never understood (or had the disrespectful nerve to ask) what he was looking at all that time. I just remember being terminally bored. A friend of mine buys art. Sometimes in galleries that are really just funky old houses where the walls are sparsely lined with random big frames, small frames and no frames. Once, on a clammy, sunny day in the Caribbean, he sat in the in a tank top and shorts with a mojito in one hand, flicked his finger and was the winning bidder during the cruise ship art auction. I’m not sure it was art. The bidder before him grabbed-up a Mickey and Goofy. A distant relative felt guilted into getting a hobby.  She chose between fine art and league bowling. She bought brushes, canvases, an easel and little tubes of pricey paint.

After three months of evening classes, she never looked back at rejecting rented shoes and shiny, heavy balls. She was soon churning out masterpieces like a bowl of fruit that looked a bit like fruit, a burst of flowers in a vase that looked a bit like flowers, and the mandatory art class cheap-thrill of a posing nude that looked a bit like a posing nude. It suddenly occurred to me that art is less of a thing and more of an intangible, indefinable soap bubble of a private and personal, special feeling. Art is like beauty, ugliness, charm, smarts, smells, tattoos . . . and golf. It’s in the mind of the beholder. It’s personal. If it looks like art, if it walks and talks like art and feels like art, forget what other people think. It’s art.

I’ve had the touristy good fortune to stand in front of a Picasso, a Warhol, the golden sarcophagus of King Tut, the real Mona Lisa, and I have looked up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and at the white marble David. Iconic art. Art is usually fancy, framed and famous or obscure swirls of paint, like the visiting Etchings of Salvator Rosa, the Rubens’Galleries and the halls and walls of other treasures in The Ringling Museum of Art.  Art is a chunky but dazzling piece of handblown glass. The voices in Rigoletto. Michael Jordan’s dunk. The ballet. Or anything from Meryl Streep or Jack Nicholson.

Art is unanimously the precious, smile-triggering, heart-melting and one-of-a-kind crayon portrait on the fridge door. Art is words and paragraphs from Mailer, Hitchens, Tom Wolfe and Grisham. The remarkable way Michael Jackson moved and posed. The way Bubba, Phil, Tiger and Rory swing. Art is diction. The mesmerizing, resonant, crisp and precision of James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Cate Blanchett, Sam Elliott and Anthony Hopkins. “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”Art is a superb plate of Rollatini di Pollo at Sarasota’s Mediterraneo. It’s the hip exhibit in Gallery 2 at Art Center Sarasota. It’s a simple but fabulously powerful, black and white Annie Leibovitz photo.  Begrudgingly, art is also the giant Unconditional Surrender kitsch at Bayfront Park. Art is the subtle music, the brooding characters and the timeless lines of The Godfather. “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”

A few years ago, fluke luck and some connections helped me schmooze and cajole my way up-front at an Emeril Live taping. The thrill of watching the affable dynamo and superchef make an Osso Buco from scratch. OMG. I am an Osso Buco gourmand and connoisseur. The perfect Osso Buco is art. Emeril was an artist.  It may never be perched on a display pedestal, hung on a gallery wall or get ogled by little old men sitting on uncomfortable, wooden museum benches. Sotheby’s may never care. And Lloyd’s of London may never insure it.

But if it feels like art to me, it’s art.