Buying original art for the first time, or the tenth time, can feel surprisingly overwhelming. There's so much to look at, so many opinions, and a quiet voice in your head wondering if you're making the "right" choice.
Here's what I've learned from years of making art and watching collectors find pieces they truly love: the right choice is rarely the obvious one. It's the personal one.
These are the five things I'd want every art buyer to sit with before they commit.
1. Don't buy the trend. Buy what stops you in your tracks.
Every few years, there's a colour palette, a style, or a "look" that floods interiors. Terracotta. Coastal blues. Minimalist line drawings. And then, just as quickly, it's gone.
Original art is not a cushion you can swap out in a season. It's an investment financially and emotionally. If you buy something because it matches the moment rather than because it genuinely moves you, there's a real chance you'll be indifferent to it within a few years.
The works that age beautifully in people's homes are the ones that were never really "on trend" to begin with. They were just deeply, personally right.
Ask yourself: would I still love this if everything around it changed?
2. Imagine living with it for the next 20 years.
This is the most useful question I know.
Not "does it match my couch" or "is it the right size for that wall." Those things matter, but they come second. The first question is: can I see myself walking past this every single day for two decades and still feeling something?
Original art that earns its place on a wall has a kind of staying power that's hard to define but easy to feel. It reveals itself slowly. You notice new details. The mood of it shifts with the light, the season, the version of you that's looking at it.
If you can imagine the painting still holding your attention in 2045, that's a very good sign.
3. Trust the feeling, not the formula.
There's no formula for what makes art "good." There's no checklist. No credential that guarantees a work will resonate with you.
What there is, is a feeling. And most people know it when it happens: a pause, a pull, a quiet "oh." Something in the work lands in a way that's hard to explain but impossible to ignore.
That feeling is worth trusting. More than the artist's CV, more than the price point, more than whether your interior designer would approve. Art that connects with you on a gut level will serve you for a lifetime in ways that perfectly curated, technically correct art simply won't.
If you feel it, that's the work.
4. Connect to the story, not just the surface.
Original art carries something that prints and reproductions simply can't replicate: the full presence of a human being who made it. Every mark, every layer, every decision. It's all there on the surface of the work.
When you know something about why a piece was made, what the artist was feeling, what landscape, or memory or emotion it came from, the work opens up in a completely different way. It becomes part of a conversation that extends beyond your walls.
Before you buy, read about the work. Read about the artist. Let yourself be curious. The story doesn't have to be dramatic or complex. Sometimes the most powerful works come from the simplest, most honest places. But knowing the story makes the connection deeper and the decision easier.
5. Let it speak to you, not to everyone else.
Here's something nobody tells you when you start buying art: you don't have to be able to explain why you love it.
You don't have to justify it to your partner, your friends, or the interior design accounts you follow. You don't have to make sure it "makes sense" in the context of everything else you own. Art is one of the few things you get to choose purely for yourself, for the way it makes you feel in your own home, in your own life.
The collectors I've spoken to who have the most joyful relationships with the art they own are the ones who stopped worrying about what other people would think. They bought what spoke to them. Quietly, personally, unequivocally.
That's the art that matters. That's the art worth living with.
If you're looking for an original work that stops you in your tracks, you're welcome to browse my current collection at emmaoconnellart.com.au. And if you have something specific in mind: a feeling, a space, a memory, I'd love to talk about creating something made just for you. Commission enquiries are always open.