Ole

I have been giving a lot of thought to the idea of art lately. What is art? Is it any expression of human emotion and thought? Art is such an overused word that is applied to basically any human activity that requires and level of skill. The art of cooking? The art of the sale? The art of not giving a fuck! So what is art? For a painter, is there just bad art and good art and, well, incredible art. A friend asked me to create a painting based upon a photo from her childhood. The photo was appealing to me so I created a painting from it. I had never seen the place before. The photo was faded and from the early 70's. Here is the painting I created:

The layout is true to the original, but I didn't include a few things because there were already so many elements. So is the above a piece of art or is it just a copy of photo I didn't take? If it's not art, what is it? Do the pieces of trash on the steps make it art? I didn't try to beautify anything nor did I attempt to make it more ugly. So is this art?