Robin Morgan
Everyday I work with images, illustrations and photographs and everyday I marry them up to descriptive narrative and frame them on a page that conveys the essence of a story. The effect must be immediate, compelling the eye to look deeper, longer. The aim is to leave a lasting, informed impression.

I accord the same principles to art. Every picture tells a story. The same goes for paint, stone, clay, metal, pen and ink. It must tell us a story. The story can be eclectic, imaginary, provocative or deeply personal, intuitive and intimate. It should fill us with something - grace, awe, empathy, discomfort or bewilderment. It can soothe or challenge, but in the end it has to captivate.

I have included photography in my selection - for too long disregarded by purists as an art, as was graffiti for thousands of years, as was rock 'n roll for a decade. The cultural and educational emancipation of Britain that began in the late 50s and continues today, has democratised art and design allowing its appreciation to filter down from the establishment. Today every teenager in Britain leaves school with a degree of understanding - that anywhere one person employs an instrument to compose and create excellence can rightly call themselves an artist. Who today would argue Eric Clapton's guitar or Banksy's spray can are not art forms? So too is the work of the gifted photographer who opens our eyes and minds as they do.

The ING Discerning Eye embodies that spirit of art democratised - how else would I, who knows nothing about 'art' but what he likes and dislikes, have been invited to select? What hangs on the walls is testimony to the ING Discerning Eye's necessity outside art's purist curation of national collections or the patronage of commercial galleries. You can love or hate what you see hung on the walls, but they are people's stories, the stories of artists. Love 'em, hate 'em, that's not what matters. What matters is art is never indifferent.

Robin Morgan is the Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine. He is also an award winning journalist, author and judge for the British Press Awards.