nuts and bolts -- terms and distinctions

An original artist, pursuing a personal vision rather than flogging current trends for fame and fortune, discovers enormous disadvantage in the current gallery system. Successful galleries exclude artists without prior acceptances elsewhere, more interested in prospective sales than providing exposure for worthy art, merchants after all. Along with independent artists, the slotted and gated gallery system also excludes an audience for a more personal and direct style of art, and the culture overall is diminished. At this point it becomes a felony.
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It is the odd paradox of art that privilege and ease make art more available, and yet also more opaque and less important. Finally, the very well off spend millions for artwork that would be turned to the wall at the goodwill, hoping to hook some even richer fool next time around, their notion of sport. Who gets left out? The uncounted and the don’t count, denizens of the outback, the people ready for ridicule if they spend a dime on art, defensive and shy -- everybody else. Some percentage will always want to be like the rich, and galleries are gonna constantly whisper ‘upgrade,’ beguiling the social aspirant with the impressive resume, but most people want something to look at.
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All art is abstract. No one has ever eaten the hundred year old pear, caught a stray bullet from a historic battle, or spent a night on a dark highway standing in front of a painting. The whole idea is abstract, always has been, and depicting actual experience on a flat surface always begins from the same location -- an unbroken blankness. It’s a most democratic space, doesn’t discriminate by gender, race, and so on, and everything popularly called ‘abstract art’ is in there too. Just  blank space is becoming rarer these days with every inch of a race car, inside and out, including the driver, the substrate for jostling logos, that also goes for ballparks and buses, and on the internet don’t get me started. Still, every artist knows the tyranny of that pristine innocence, the dazzling white surface before the first mark, and it’s a good thing to keep in mind when looking at art as well.
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Just how much is abstracted from life in any painting? Is it just the part you see and recognize, or are there parallel elements that enter the brain like pheromones, those chemicals in the air that alter perception without impinging consciousness? Whatever it is, sometimes original paintings are capable of exhibiting a presence, almost like gravity, that the very best poster or reproduction, even totally accurate digital never will. This magnetic effect certain paintings have on the attention, usually becoming stronger over time, can only be experienced directly, and if you’re looking at enough art now, you’ll know when it comes along.