I'm not sure what to say about your husband, it defintely doesn't sound very nice of him - but I went over to your flickr stream and you have some really great photographs. Take them to the gallery and see what you're told. I didnt really look through much, but it looks like your strengths are definitely in your pictures of animals, and I like the sense of whimsy in some of your composition - and you definitely have lots of people commenting on flickr that they like your photos

I've found that photography (as with all art) is somewhat personal - I had a boyfriend once who flat out told me that photography wasn't art (we were in an art museum and he didn't want to look at the photographs, I didn't want to look at more smeary impressionist paintings)... Not the most tactful thing to say to someone who has photography as a hobby... But I'll often look through photographs with others, and what speaks to them or doesn't speak to them is completely different from what I like... And it may be that for some reason, some of your photos just don't speak to your husband while they will to a large portion of the population... and that having a BFA or working in design has sort of made him rigid in his opinions or how he looks at things... and freshness or a different approach is quite often really appealing in art...