An article in The Guardian by Madeleine Bunting touched on a trait I’ve been noticing in myself and others. Her piece was about how in talk about the global war on terror the European Enlightenment is often wheeled out as an opposing force to fanatical religious fundamentalism. She questioned the way it was used to validate arguments against religion. She was surprised by the vehemence with which contributors to her blog discussion defended what they believed was a correct history of the Enlightenment.

Faith in cool reason seems to arouse as much irrational passion as religious zeal. Intellectuals have their own testosterone-soaked equivalent of who has the biggest biceps: “I know more than you” — the machismo of knowledge. A lot of emotion gets invested in becoming The One Who Knows Best. Oh what bliss it is to be so sure, so right.

We all have a part of ourselves that cries out for certainty and meaning. If we encounter a contemporary artwork one of the first things we ask is: “What does it mean?” We can be uncomfortable with not knowing, not being sure, not having the safe ground of the authorised, correct interpretation. When encountering an artwork we seek the explanatory panel.

All the art historians and curators coming out of the ever-expanding universities are keen to explain. Knowing what they think it’s all about may increase our enjoyment of the artwork but perhaps that can also lead to us devaluing our own personal uninformed response. This is typical of the way we can discount the things we learn in life that don’t get us a GCSE. We are all equally well qualified to say yuk or wow.

Alan Bennett thought there should be a big notice up at the entrance to the National Gallery that says “You don’t have to like everything”. We are sometimes coy about expressing our tastes for fear of appearing ignorant. I am educated enough to know how much I don’t know. I gave up at school as soon as I made my decision to become an artist. I feel insecure around knowledge and maybe this has led to me having a reverence for academics that may be misplaced.

Susan Sontag said: “Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual on art.” Perhaps she means that heady types are mystified and a bit jealous of artists’ ease with creativity and free expression so they theorise the fun out of art. Excellence at book-learning is only part of being truly bright. I sometimes feel that there is a sliding scale of emotional intelligence that starts high with women, then goes intellectual women, men, intellectual men, Asperger’s syndrome.

Often it seems as if dubious theories get trowelled on to an artwork to shore up some intellectual’s personal emotional response.

I am asked to talk about my art sometimes. I sense that hunger for understanding within the audience. I used to feel pressurised to come up with answers to satisfy that hunger. I have learned that it can lead to me coming up with hurried and spurious interpretations of my own work.

Such is the status that meaning can have over feeling that I bow to the pressure and engage what Steven Pinker calls the “Baloney Generator”. This is our rational self that is so uncomfortable with the potential ambiguity of an emotional motivation that it will try to pin things down with desperately formulated rationales. The cleverer we are the better we are at making up more convincing meanings and reasons.

Nowadays I employ a more open strategy and talk about the things I was looking at and thinking about when I was making a particular piece and leave it up to the audience to make their own direct connections. This feels more satisfying and true than any nailed-down explanation.

As humans, we have a constant discussion going on in our brains. On our right sides we have instinct, emotion, intuition; on the left, intellect, language, reason. As an artist, I feel that it is from this dialogue that inspiration comes. If a decision about how to proceed with a work is a toss-up between watertight concept and sensual intuition I tend to give in to intuition because of its track record.

My intuition will say: “I fancy drawing an aeroplane.” My intellect will ask: “Why?”

“Because I liked aeroplanes when I was young and they remind me of happy times playing.”

“Drawing aeroplanes is childish; we should not give in to your boyish hobby whims; this is the grown-up world of contemporary art.”

“But I really want to draw one, and in the past you must admit I’ve had some great ideas.”

“Well I do concede that, and aeroplanes do have some interesting meanings these days, what with 9/11, the war on terror, global warming — these will give the drawing academic weight.”

“Yippee. It’s gonna be a wicked jet fighter.”

I wonder if a similar dialogue went on in someone’s head that started: “I fancy invading Iraq in the name of enlightened democracy.”