A home without good art is like driving with ear plugs.

There you are, cruising in your convertible on a sunny summer day. Your hair is blowing in the win as the warm sun skims the surface of your skin.

“Let’s get some tunes for the drive…Hmm…What do I want to hear”, you think to yourself. “How about this one, haven’t heard this in a long time…Volume, level 4…Nah, screw that, it’s nice out, turn it up!”

As your favorite track is blasting, you ponder on the lyrics, thinking how you never really understood that line of lyrics until now. You can completely relate to the music and your mind wanders. You think of your favorite memories when hearing this song. Friends’ faces start popping into your consciousness because they remind you of this band.

Your playlist sets the mood for the rest of your drive and you arrive sort of in a trance, totally enthralled in the music. “Where’d the past one hour go?…That drive flew by”, you say out loud.    (Yeah, you were talking to yourself…Busted!)

We’ve all had this type of experience. Getting lost in the mood…Drifting away in our minds when our favorite a guitar solo blazes. Adrenaline pumping from that drum beat or bass thumping. The way the singer’s voice goes through you, seems like a spiritual experience.

Now imagine that same experience on mute. Every day, driving in pure silence….or even worse, listening to 90’s boy bands on repeat with tampon commercials on the radio every 5 minutes. Not too pleasant to imagine huh? Bottle that feeling for a moment.

If you’re reading this at home or work, take a look up on your walls. Do you have paintings, photography or decor that inspires you in the place you spend most of your life? Or do you have a framed poster of an eagle with some corny saying on the bottom that you bought from a poster store? Maybe you got ‘classy’ and bought that photo that was on sale at Target ?

It is sad, (I was going to say pathetic, but I’ll stick to sad) that many people will put so much pride and effort into finding good music to cruise to, but completely ignore the importance of daily inspiration that ‘good art’ can bring to your life.

Have you ever sat on your couch with a cup of coffee and experienced that complete intrigue of staring at a well placed brushstroke or following the lines in a masterful artistic composition? Have you ever looked at a painting looking for cool shapes and colors like you used to gaze at clouds when you were a child?

We spend thousands of dollars traveling to exotic locations to just ‘see’ cool seascapes,palm trees and tropical fish. Men will spend hundreds hours scouring the internet for ‘eye candy’ while women search through catalogs looking for ‘pretty things’, yet still people underestimate how significant of a need it is to feed your eyes.

I think there’s a direct correlation between the lack of education in the arts and our cultures’ deep void of “culture“. If you’ve read this far, I encourage you to make a change….Discover your taste in art right now. Explore the web, go to a museum, browse art books. Observe what you like and don’t like and why. Talk to friends about it.

Let your eyes mature. Seek out beautiful things and share it with others. Pick up some art supplies and express yourself. Search for artists that inspire you and help support the arts by collecting their work in your home. You can buy art prints on canvas or start your collection out with a $25 print. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at what a conversation piece they will become and the memories you will associate with those visual connections.