Over the last couple of years, I have watched several programs or videos about this or that dead artist and their art. I find learning about their lives very interesting but I have realised that what the speaker says about their work has more to do with the speaker than with the artist. They present their ideas on what the artist meant or intended or even represented as if it is fact. I once heard such a speaker/presenter say that the artist featured in the program chose to use watercolour because his father, who he did not get along with, painted in oils. There is no fact to back this statement with. As an artist, it seems to me that one chooses one's medium based on preferences of medium not on a relationship with a parent. My father painted with watercolours and tried oils a couple of times because he liked to try things, but he always went back to watercolours. He tried portraits but never liked the result and so always went back to landscapes. He offered me a set of oil paints for my fifteenth birthday and a small canvas on board that had a line drawing of the little soldier boy playing the flute (it is quite famous, but I cannot remember the title or the artist) and I painted it as it was represented on the photo. Until then I had occasionally painted with gouache or watercolours, but my preferred medium was pencils. My father was surprised at the result of my first attempt at oil paint. I was surprised by his surprise: it was just a copy of the picture he had given me and so of course it was going to be good... the original picture was good. I found out that I preferred the feel and play of the oils to the rigidity of the too-fast-drying water-based paints. Watercolours seemed to require so much planning. Oils did not work for my father, but they did for me.
Then the speaker 'explains' the paintings. Their explanations are often very interesting, but I cannot help wonder what the artist would think of them. I have listened to people explain my paintings to me and I find it very interesting to see how others interpret what I have done. It rarely has anything to do with the painting I painted but that is perfectly all right by me.
I do not think there is a right way or a wrong way of seeing or feeling a painting. It is completely subjective and that is how it should be. There are book clubs... I wonder if there are painting clubs where people get together regularly to discuss the 'painting of the month'.