What do you feel when you look at a painting ?

It depends on the painting.

Some paintings make me silently question “Why is this even here ..how is that art?”

Others will have me gazing at them for longer ..taking in the different strokes, colours, shapes, etc that the artist used.

It is not often that I am overwhelmed with feeling by a painting. If a painting moves me, it becomes a personal connection for me that I treasure. The feeling is usually of a deeper familiarity ..a calmness. Sometimes a bit of whimsy and/or fascination as well.

As @PluckyDog noted: “It depends on the painting.”

Some make me calm.
Some make me giddy.
Some make me angry.
Some make me confused.

Some make me whisper “that bastard” and shake my head.
I’m looking at you, Pollack.

Although I make no claim to being a scholar of art history, I have taken over a year of coursework in that field. Art moves me, becomes me, and I love finding reasons to love it.

I’m not going to pretend I’m this amazingly special-artsy-deep-eccentric boy, so I don’t exactly feel anything. I hope maybe it’s because I’m too young yet to appreciate it, because I have tried, but never succeeded.
That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy art though. Often I look at a painting or a picture and I wonder how the artist could have created such an amazing work of art, I try to move inside the artists brain and then, I might feel something, but mostly it’s astonishment or admiration.
Also trying to live in the time the painting was created is exhilarating. You just ask yourself: “What would it have been to live that day…” and then you just let it carry you…

I wonder how the artist managed to make folds of cloth look better and richer coloured than in real life. How a little daub of white paint can bring an eye to life. Sometimes the mood of a painting affects me in a way I can’t describe, like music or I imagine stepping into the picture into a different time and place. I could go on and on, there are endless varieties of painting.

I believe each paintings has its own story (it’s also very subjective,however). The ones that impress me the most are those renaissance paintings (romanticism art). I still can’t comprehend those Da vinci and Al Gore’s paintings. Too complicated to understand.

It depends on the painting.I do however,always feel something.
Many times I will examine their technique and if I really like it,I will spend alot of time looking.
Two years ago,my neighbor at an art fair I was doing,had a watercolor painting in her booth that looked exactly like a very special place at a beach I had been to. I almost cried!
It was like she herself had been there.She traded it for some of my work and it is now hanging in my bedroom.
The following year,at the same art fair,I walked into her booth and saw a winter scene of another place I had been to! It was the strangest thing!
Once again,she traded with me and it too,hangs in my bedroom in the winter season.

I can’t seem to appreciate paintings as much as others. I recognize the skill and it’s really amazing, but I don’t sit there for an extended period of time and revel.

I look at most paintings I see. Examining the way the painter laid the strokes down to achieve the resulting image is fascinating to me.
Regarding emotive qualities, I’ll go straight to the most interesting example I know, abstract art. An effective abstract painting will evoke emotions and liminal perceptions. It took me a long time to appreciate what is accomplished in abstract art, and to “get” it enough to know when it wasn’t accomplished. (I like the Woody Allen movie where they they go through a gallery and judge each piece as art or “soup” referring to Andy Warhol’s soup cans as non-art/junk). IMHO some stuff I see is definitely “soup”. )

It totally depends on the painting.

When I look at this painting, I am swept away by its power.

When I look at this painting, I always smile.

When I look at works by Picasso, I am usually unmoved.

I really depends on the painting I looked at several pieces at the Louvre and fell in love with the Coronation of Napoleon and it just moved me I sat and looked at it for a really long time. This painting is really quite large and the area where his mother is sitting was actually added in because Napoleon was unable to attend the coronation. What is wonderful about the Louvre you are able to get these headphones and are able to walk through the musem and they describe the paintings in the on the recordings depending on the room you are in. They had this as well went we went to the Palace of Versailles. Another wonderful place to view art is at the Palace of Versailles, they have a number of sculptures and busts and paintings that are as well amazing, not to mention the hall of mirrors.

I gaze at paintings, whether they are great or not and marvel at the capacity of human beings to express themselves in such a creative, beautiful and sometimes disturbing ways. I stare at paintings and I see souls and spirits embedded in that frame. I see the past frozen in time, colorful petals blooming or cut skin bleeding, dripping blood in front of me.

Long live art and artists who create them!

Usually something like “Why would anybody bother to paint that?”