My father once said art is a contagious disease of life.
I tend to think painting tends to seek an underlying truth, whether in the artist's reflection or subject they are painting. Pictured here are some powder pigments on Belgian Linen. Painting with these, fomulating one's own binders, leads to a certain truth for myself.
In discussing what art actually is, or is not, one can do little better than following St Francis of Assisi's dictum whereby
The doing with the hands is the labour
The doing with the hands and mind is the craft
The doing with hands, mind and heart is the art
This of course dramatically widens our criteria for art and implies we need to go through labour and craft to find art. It makes more sense when to deliver true art, the craft has to be good enough for it to be second nature - in the here and now. We can look at some of the performance aspects in this RYA Olympic article on mental toughness. I Peformance isn't often dealt with in fine art but I belive gifted artists are very competive and an understanding of competition .and performance can aid our own pracice., it can certainly help assess our judgement of what good art actually is.
We might also ask why St Francis can be considered and expert on Art and we can start after his death by looking at Giotto, who spent most of his life portraying the life of St Francis. His frescos are usually above placed head height and are designed to be viewed as such. ie like movies, a single frame at as time. The fresco below would be best viewed looking upwards.
Here Giotto is try to include us the audience in the scene's drama. That's what St Francis did with his Biblical padgents, using humour and tragedy in a way his audience could relate to.