Most artist spend inordinate amounts of time contemplating an individual piece while in the process of creating it, and there by gain a multitude of insights and associations that are rarely communicable in this age of elevator pitch statements. But 'expressible content' and immediate 'visual parsing' aside, there is often so much more to the reality of the individual piece that gets left out of the representational image that we're used to seeing. Much of this is dependent on the situation that the painting is seen.
To get specific, I have a painting (Entice: Existent) that looks a warm red-purple under regular household or gallery lights (which are super yellow). Seen in natural light the color has a strikingly different experience - it turns to a periwinkle blue purple. And then there is the reality that there is often glare in a house that can make a painting difficult to see, but if you're lucky it shows off another aspect to the piece. Relative reflective qualities are something that i've been trying to incorporate for awhile, and it plays nicely with between colorfield and 'object' elements .
Here is an example.
The presence of surface qualities is something that never really comes across in a photo. Seeing the play of glazes, or the sensation of bushwork is almost always lost. I would rather have the painting give more to the viewer in person than the representative image of print and web though, but sometimes it is frustrating knowing how much is lost.
The final thing worth mentioning is how a frame finishes a piece. There has been a trend in contemporary art to not frame a painting. It gets expensive quickly, and framing styles tend to date a piece, but simply addressing the edges makes for a more elegant finish... Call me old fashioned.
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