Despite an historic propensity for showing us very beautiful things (waterlilies, starry nights, kisses), art has always terrified me.  Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that the sight of a Van Gogh or Rubens prompts heart palpitations and prolonged episodes of heavy sweating (though The Scream is a notable exception capable of inducing nightmares); art has instead left me feeling somehow inadequate. Much in the same way that finishing a literary masterpiece convinces me I’m wasting my time considering ever writing again, a well-executed oil-on-canvas renders my critical responses mute.

I blame this fear (wholly misplaced) on my total lack of exposure to art at a young age; growing up in rural southern England, there was nary a gallery in sight, and I was much more likely to encounter cattle and meadows than Cézannes and Manets. Art was something for postcards and dentists’ offices, which I suppose was a contributing factor to any initial reticence. I was 18 before I dared set foot inside the labyrinth that is the National Gallery.

It was quite by accident, then, that I ended up working in a contemporary art gallery over the Long Vacation. The whole experience of dealing with clients felt like a protracted supervision, during which I was constantly plagued with an anxiety that my juvenile and ill-informed opinions would expose themselves. My colleagues did little to ease my insecurities – they were too perfect: intimidatingly chic, and witty in the extreme – only one step removed from beret-toting, vogue-smoking denizens of the 1920s Paris salons.

Attempting to form an enlightened commentary on art about which I knew nothing became an art in itself. What ensued was a series of increasingly elaborate bluffs in which I vehemently avoided the words 'nice', 'pretty', and 'good', and censored any initial comments that were oddly reminiscent of essays written for GCSE English (of 'the lock represents entrapment' variety).   

It is my suspicion that many people living in the shadow of these time-honoured, gilded temples to high art share my affliction of imposter syndrome, and have probably never visited as a result (despite the fact that their taxes pay for their continued existence).  To suggest that art has been the domain of the intellectual elite is neither an original nor controversial assertion.

I don’t think I’ve been alone in the belief that, when confronted with great art, a reverential silence is a far preferable option to wading in misguided and abusing artistic jargon, thus exposing our perceived ignorance. Take, for example, conceptual art. I am not even 100 per cent sure what a conceptual artist actually is. I have spent the better part of two decades convinced I’m missing out on some great artsy secret, some real-life Da Vinci code that every other enlightened soul nodding thoughtfully in front of an Old Master is already aware of. Or worse – perhaps art is something that everyone except me inherently just understands, at once vital and glaringly obvious, and that I am simply too stupid to notice.

Such notions are dangerous. The phobia that we are in some way philistines, lacking in some mental faculty, is preventing people from accessing wonderful, meaningful, and (dare I say, without falling down the neologistic wormhole) meditative things. Because, honestly, what I found was that you don’t need to be able to identify a style of brushstroke or pinpoint a piece to the art history timeline to think and feel things about art. What this of course means is that you really don’t have to be an artist, or a critic, or a historian to visit some hallowed white-walled shrine. So, next time that you do, say something. Anything – even if “That’s very pretty!” is your segue into some grandiose critique, or even if you have nothing else to say at all.

By denying ourselves access to art, idealising it as some holiness to which our impure minds ought not to partake, we are devaluing our own emotional responses. Art, as messy and complex as it can be, is just a vehicle to allow us to feel something. It’s like positive propaganda for the soul; it can make us hopeful or energised, nostalgic or lonely. We don’t hasten to quell our tears at the ending of a tragic play, or to stifle our laughs before a top-notch stand-up comic, because those responses are the reason that those works exist at all, and fine art really shouldn’t be seen all that differently. You don’t need to justify why you like one work over another any more than you need to declare why you prefer one colour or food to some other variety. So, yes, art can seem pretentious and isolating, with its fancy frames and eye-watering price tags. But, the more I consider my emotional engagement as atonement for an otherwise blistering artistic illiteracy, the more I’m sure that’s probably the big secret I thought I was missing out on in the first place.