"Trust Me - I'm Crazy" runs until August 4. This is Thomas Von Klettenberg's first art exhibition in Asia.

To many of us, the ability to detect or appreciate art is exclusive to those with substantial training in the field. This notion, thus, espouses that anyone who can appreciate art may also have the capacity to create it. Which is probably so in the sense that one's mastery of something often equips him with both an ample understanding of it and the skill to produce it.

But this may be a highly technical concept of art. A more practical interpretation of art might be that it is something that shakes or affect our senses in any way. Then art becomes something that life itself is made of.

In "Art in Daily Life," R. W. Machell wrote: "We are not specially interested in the life of an artist unless we ourselves are artists, but we all live lives in which art plays a part, and alas in most lives a very small part, so small indeed, that to most people it is considered as something quite unnecessary and wholly ornamental; but I think that an artist, who is a true artist, is one who has specialized in his life some faculty that is present in the lives of all men, or would be present if they were living true lives, which few can do today."

In the light of the special regard we give artists today, many people try so hard to create art but can hardly be called real artists. And yet others simply "try to live as butterflies, without effort, trusting to their genius to do their work and to spare them all need of effort," according to Machell, who also cited a great artist who took a butterfly as his emblem. The artist, Machell wrote, said, "Industry in art is not a virtue; it is a necessity."

It can be said, therefore, that it does not only take talent and training to create art - it takes consistent effort, too. Innate talent is like a seed, it has to be nurtured by proper training to make it flourish. And it takes constant nurturing still to make it yield beautiful results.

This is true, as well, with the rest of humanity, who for lack either of special talent or of training, are content only with appreciating the art that others create or sensing the art in the life around them. At the most fundamental level, the ability to recognize art has much to do with one's own degree of sensitivity.

And sensitivity can be cultivated, too. To make the effort to see a sense of order in chaos, for example, can lead to a better understanding of why the world is what it is, and also why people we abhor get in our nerves. At times is takes only an open mind to consider how every life form we encounter - from the tiniest mite to a dearest friend - perceives the world on its or his own. At other times, we are prompted to refer to a superior force that makes and puts things exactly what and where they are.

In a practical sense, even mere curiosity is an art form necessary to move us to discover more. The art of loving lends meaning to our day-to-day existence. The art of nourishing ourselves takes its natural cue from the bite of hunger. Even fear itself is art, for it usually makes us more careful of ourselves. Art are the positive ways that we devise for our own good, to make our life gratifying and meaningful. 

Art is the flair that makes anything significant. That is why, often, the subject of an art work is framed - to isolate it from the mess of its surrounding world, so it may draw particular attention to itself. Everything is important; but taken all together things can be just an unintelligible clutter. 

There are various other arts than what we find on canvas, in the frame, or in the melodies of the music we hear. The vibrant colors of sunrise nourish our senses, and so does the music of the wind, the birds, and of people's laughter. These matched by the sweet caress of the cool breeze and the warm company of a loved one is a fortune within everyone's reach - but a fortune everyone often fail to see because it is so commonplace.

In the end, the greatest art of all may yet be the art of seeing, of recognizing, and of feeling the sumptuous beauty that suffuses life every day.