Painting is not just capturing the pixels of light on canvas. This is what children consider painting. Great painters capture emotion and energy on canvas -- that's part of the essence that I am alluding to. That's what separates an artist who can realistically capture a scene from a master. Emotionally mature people who experienced life can recognize that emotion and energy in great paintings.

It's kind of like math. Some proofs and formulas are considered elegant or even beautiful. To the untrained eye they look like letters, symbols, and numbers.

Take Euler's identity: e^(i*π) - 1 = 0. My kids see gibberish, since they are in grade school. I see something surprising and neat but don't fully understand it. I've spoken to people who have a deeper understanding of math who can talk wonder about this simple-looking equation and use words of feeling to describe it.