We wondered just what it was in a piece of artwork that made a viewer, listener, or reader respond positively even when they could not say why they did so. We mulled this over during the evening hours and we each made suppositions or proffered to the company the theories that we'd read or those that came to mind inspirationally during the meandering discourse. Later, I wrote down my thoughts and later still made amendments. This is a polishing of those notes. First let me say that it is hard for me to describe what I, as an artist, do even as I try to achieve a positive response from an audience.
Artwork is a productive dialogue.
The work of art is created by the artist in response to an inspirational event which is translated into the artwork. Since we will are talking about what is the essence of preference we will consider works of art that have audiences. But let us begin at the beginning, with inspiration, and then continue on to what I feel is a cause for the essence of preference. I feel there are three classes of inspirational experience and though they are related and have commonalties, they are still subtly different from each other. I have tried in what follows to distinguish them from each other.