Sometimes in life it’s like the dots are being joined up by something or someone else and I had one of those, ‘ah I see’ moments recently.

An email pinged in to my inbox from my son’s school talking about various categories in their Eisteddfod competition.

Art in the style of ‘RhiannonArt’ was one such section.

The name didn’t conjure an image and so I went for a quick little look on the internet, which revealed the website of this Cardiff Bay based painter. I recognised the vibrant colours instantly.

My lovely friend Lynne had bought me a tea towel at Christmas. I had often thought that using it was the only moment of cheeriness about drying dishes since my dishwasher went kaput a while ago. This is because, as it turns out, the vivid hues and tones on the cloth are a RhinnonArt design of a scene of the Millennium Centre and surrounds.

I don’t know much about art. As a very young child, I touched a very old painting and set off very many alarms and angry security guards. I have perhaps been nervous about art ever since. I know what I like. But, I always feel like I shouldn’t talk about it and can’t say anything useful and illuminating because I don’t know the terms to use.

I say all this as someone that went to Goldsmiths College, University of London, alma mater of Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley, Mark Wallinger; where the Turner Prize is practically the graduation show for my fellow alumni’s fine art and other art. I have been to many of the great ‘arty’ cities, from Paris (where I nearly fell asleep in the Musee D’Orsay) to Rome, to Venice, to Verona, to Berlin and to Barcelona. But I have just never felt like I knew enough to really know what I was talking about.

Cardiff hosts the Artesmundi prize. I looked at the short-listed entries and nodded thoughtfully whilst murmuring, “interesting”, feeling I have nothing insightful to add.

But then I got to thinking, or more, I got to feeling.

I was not a rebellious child, but something about that huge canvas, over thirty years ago, made me reach out and touch.

I saw an exhibition once charting how oppressive regimes had historically used art to intimidate people and an unsettled chill settled upon my spine.

Returning to Mark Walllinger, years ago I walked in to a gallery and was met by his horse paintings and almost lost my breath at the vivid, sinewy detail. I smile at Steve John’s expressive drawings. I watched an artist paint a scene on the banks of Lake Garda and promptly bought it, sighing every time I look at it, remembering a wonderful holiday.

I’ve realised that feeling something is sometimes as much if not more valuable than over-thinking.