SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE TURNER PRIZE

As the 2012 Turner Prize show of shortlisted artists opens at Tate Britain this week, I feel it's time to reflect on the role of art in society. So here's my mini-manifesto. Visual art should ideally:

• be aesthetically pleasing
• challenge our perception
• have a spiritual value

I found all these qualities in some pavement art outside a major a high street retailer yesterday: a photograph of "Tom's" pictures  is provided at www.donella.posterous.com (due to problems with blogger images).

One of my regrets in middle age is that I failed to submit a spoof entry for the Turner Prize, although I did consider applying to the former Channel 4's series "Faking It" as a conceptual artist.

My problem is not so much with the competition itself as the industry which it has spawned, and the pretentious language used by some artists and those who write about them. In short, the Turner Prize has contributed to the commodification of art and its spiritual devaluation.