How do you describe your paintings?

Having recently done a search of the inter-web  for "decorative art" I found a group of painters and the work they perform and websites with members and pictures of motel rooms with wall art... It was a world of fruit and flowers, vases and striped table cloths and birds on a limb. It was all of these things and more done very badly as if painted with dust and the vast and surprisingly fresh palette of pigment scraped from the color plates of a 1960's Italian cookbook, mixed with dishwater. Paintings so lacking in luster as if a great skill were applied to keep them so. I should not be so attached to the description of a genre that flaunts it's mediocrity, like a sculptor longing to make knick knacks.
During the process of drawing and painting there is a mental dialogue going on. Much of this dialogue is designed to make the finished piece look better to the prospective viewer. Firstly it must satisfy some basic criteria but thinking of a larger audience as the painting evolves is a type of editing that is not at all censorship. It is a maturing of the work. Taking a moment and thinking about the potential viewership gives one a different perspective. It's not as if I paint for my mother, this would not be a useful voice. My mother would prefer I joined one of the afore mentioned groups and painted flowers. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with painting flowers: I once got an erection viewing a Georgia O'Keef. It was a black flower but i digress.
It is simply a process where a painter decides is this good enough? Is it worthy of taking the time out of someone's day and asking them to view it? This could be in relation to many aspects of the painting; contrasting colors, shapes, hard and soft lines; has one been bold enough? Defining form; has enough information been given? Too much? Has the negative space been used to it's full potential? Does it help move the viewers attention in and out of the painting's subject matter or is it a distraction? The list goes on (indeed, you say). At some point you have to turn the critical voice off but I think one has to ask themselves: Has the effort been successful or did the painter actually fail at bringing the piece up to a standard worthy of viewing?
 When a painting is scrupulously conducted and worthy of viewing, worthy of hanging on a wall or making a statement in a room or corridor, is it not decorative? My usual antithesis to this idea is the work of Frida Kahlo. An absolutely riveting personal life story, but she couldn't draw her way out of a terrible painting.  Good therapy perhaps and I understand the attraction, but, here with the word: not decorative. On the other hand is say, Jackson Polock, another incredible personal drama. The man's passion is almost unmatched. I'm not a big Polock fan either but, it IS decorative. It has what it takes to command a space and lift the room to another level in lieu of the painting's inclusion.
So I wrestle with this term. I am not a fan of the company it affords me, but I find it's execution to be a purifying process.