Find out how to embrace the digital revolution and engage with your favourite pieces and artists in a way that might reveal more than you anticipate

Excitement comes in many shapes and guises. Sometimes it’s unexpected, but occasionally it’s gleefully anticipated and when it delivers, it’s hard to beat. For me, going to a museum or gallery delivers every time: observing visitors from near and far, taking a pit stop at the in-house café for a pick-me-up, perusing the gift shop for replicas and souvenirs of favourite artworks. And then, of course, there’s ambling around the gallery floors. Strolling past artworks, colours, shapes and forms it’s possible to explore new ideas, challenge existing emotions and discover hidden or long-forgotten spaces within yourself.

I’ll never forget my first emotional response to a painting. It was Spanish expressionist Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of Sebastià

Junyer Vidal, which depicts two figures in a dark café setting.

There was something so striking about the scale, colour, expression and tension of the piece that stopped me dead in my tracks, nearly bringing me to tears. It wasn’t particularly beautiful, but solemn, and it affected me.

That art has the potential to move and change people is not new. American poet Mark Doty poignantly describes the sensation in his 2001 book Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: