The fine artist is a con-artist. The first move in the art-making process is wrong. It is a lie and it has to be. On strengths of intuition and inspiration, the artist makes it right. Art creates its own truth. It gives imagination credence as a tool of the intellect. Truth in art need not extend beyond art object and viewer. Every painting makes the propositional statement: 'This is art.' The viewer decides the truth; it discloses itself in the encounter. However circular and self-fulfilling its logic, art's truth is not absolute or objective. Truth in art is an attribute of perception in affirmation of cultural myths that define the individual.

Art is not based on the phenomenology of perception alone. What distinguishes the aesthetic experience is its fine art context. The encounter takes on the attributes of an analytic proposition. The painting proclaims its relevance to the viewer from a context that includes all art. There is an implied conceptual framework to the perceptual experience. It is a 'meta' experience that reflects on itself and its nature as art. Art works because it fulfills the conditions of the art myth in a way that alters what is known about art and ourselves.