How to Look at a Painting

Paton takes us back to the place where he had his first brush with painting and fell in love with it. He shows how art connects us with the past and how the most important painting in your life is the one you're off to see next.

Through the ages, artists have had a love affair with the body. But now that painting no longer has the naked body to itself, can painting still get under our skin?

Landscape painting has the power to capture not only how the scenery looks but also how a place feels. By zeroing in on New Zealand landscapes, Paton shows how artists can paint what we don't see at first.

Drawing inspiration from the painted past, today's artists can give a fresh lease on life to old works. In the process, they are bridging the gap between the new and the old-in this episode, between New Zealand and old Venice.

When it comes to portraits, how can paint compete with pixels? Are painted portraits worth looking at in our digital age? Find out how they can look back in time, at the wider culture, and at us.

When religious art came down from the walls of churches, it began a new life on gallery walls. Paton shows how religious work still addresses the big questions about our place and purpose in life and whether there is something bigger than ourselves worth believing in.

Paton takes on the challenge of abstract art-paintings that sometimes "look like nothing.""He finds there is always something to say about these paintings that, instead of leaving the world behind, can often bring it closer .

Once a form of propaganda to tell history from the victors' perspective, painting has become a way of speaking truth to power-a seemingly silent medium that is a voice for those who do not have one.

Not always a canvas framed and hung on a wall, painting has now begun to flirt with other art forms and formats. But how are we expected to look at it when it no longer looks like a painting?

Visiting art galleries and museums can be overwhelming. Paton considers the challenge of trying to find that intimate moment with a painting in a public space-and why, with great art, there is always more to see.

Enter a world within a world-the world of the art dealer and the people who buy expensive paintings, where the thrill is always to find new pieces but it's always okay to say, "I'm just looking."

In our busy, fast-paced lives, why should we take time for paintings? Paton thinks of galleries as time machines where we slow down to look and where paintings look back, speaking to us across time and forcing us to take stock of our lives.