Some people have shopping down to a fine art, but at least browsing around Bacon's studio won't make you feel inadequate, writes Cleo Murphy.

More people visit art galleries when it's raining. It's a handy indoor activity when a trip to the city becomes too sodden for shopping. Browsing around a gallery versus browsing around the shops. Even when it's not raining it can present a dilemma. Shops or gallery? Consumerism or creativity? Imma's late opening in July and August played farther into this thinking with an advertising campaign that might have been for BTs. Open late on Thursdays.

It is of course anathema to dedicated art buffs that there might be some parity between the two experiences, while for retail therapy addicts there might be a similar "doh" moment. Unless, of course, the gallery in question has a good gift shop and a decent cafe.

For those who lie somewhere in the centre of that polarity the battle is between the superficial seduction of a few hours' shopping and knowing that a deeper force is at work when you place yourself before the creative expression of a true artist. You know it takes time to assimilate the work and that the more time you spend looking the more accessible it will become. It's just that there's 25 per cent off at Debenhams for one day and you only have a few hours.

Ultimately, it's about a sense of satisfaction. The potential for feeling inadequate after a shopping trip is huge. You couldn't find it, couldn't fit into it, couldn't afford it, couldn't co-ordinate it. Stand in front of Lucien Freud's portraits at Imma and you know you're in the presence of real people. It's not simply a matter of body image and that you feel more smug because they're not smooth, flawless, tanned and perfectly proportioned. It's because life is not smooth and perfectly proportioned. It's because someone who has a grasp of humanity, with all its warts and blemishes, has the technique and the craft to capture that on canvas where you can look at it and feel a sense of resonance.

You might want to go to Habitat and find the perfect sofa to match your livingroom and the lifestyle to which you aspire. No harm in that. A good sofa is an essential comfort in the hard, unyielding modern world. But don't deprive yourself of a visit to Francis Bacon's studio at the Hugh Lane with all its glorious uncomfortable chaos. Know that it supported a different lifestyle - a painful but expressive one. Look at his work and know that expression is a release of pain.

Real life hurts. A sweet bargain on a Thomas Pink shirt is a Band Aid for the time being. Art is the more consistent comfort of knowing that you're not alone. Or even knowing that it's not all real. Welcome to the world of abstract, even though it's not that welcoming to the uninitiated. Occasionally you'll trip across work such as Louis Le Brocquy's still lifes which help soften the transition. Simple still lifes we all understand. Someone you know produced one at an art class. Look at Le Brocquy's and watch him question the reality of what's before him. Is it all an illusion? Sometimes you'd like to think so. Questions of Buddhism and quantum physics come to mind. You walk away wondering.

Commercial forces are there to persuade you that you must have. There's a highly sophisticated psychology at play, and when it becomes too powerful it's dangerous. It plays on insecurities. They're not selling you a great pair of shoes. They're selling you a glamorous lifestyle, a boost to your ego and an end to your insecurities. And you're buying it wholesale.

We don't even know how badly we need artists to see things differently and then to show us the difference. The gallery doors are open but if we don't walk in often and look, we won't grasp the meaning. Maybe you stand in front of a painting and find you don't have the vocabulary to discuss it - the knowledge of colour, the use of perspective and so on. That's not important. What matters is that you walk away wondering.

The only way to appreciate art is to expose yourself to it often and see how you respond. Buy a few postcards and a book in the gift shop; they'll give you a few pointers and fix the addiction all in one go. Art answers the deeper questions. Shopping satisfies the shallower ones. I don't want to live in Francis Bacon's studio and spend my life in constant searching of the dark side of life. Sometimes I want to come up for air and trawl Grafton Street for something utterly frivolous. But there's a balance to be struck between the polarities and reaching it requires time spent training artistic senses.