What's in a name?
What's in a name?
I like to give my paintings colorful titles. Each one tells a story.
I believe in giving my art pieces actual names.
You won’t find an ‘Untitled’ painting in my body of work. If it doesn’t have a title (or working title), you’re not seeing it yet. I am disappointed to see art in a show or museum that goes by ‘Untitled’, especially when I find so much soul, emotion, and beauty in the work.
I hate saying ‘it’s that Untitled piece, do you remember it?’ to someone. ‘Which Untitled piece?’ they might well ask, there are so many of them, so many poor nameless pieces out there.
Maybe the artist wanted the piece to stand on its own, without being too literal, but it’s boring to me. Would you name your dog or child Untitled? Even my car has a name, it’s called Firefly. Because it’s a gorgeous lime green, like a firefly, of course.
Having a sense of humor is important to me as a person, and as an artist.
Because one runs into so much ENERGY while creating something, anything, new, it’s important to remember the light side, the amusement. And so I’m grateful to the artists who look like they’re having fun, and sometimes their titles reflect this.
John Lurie is a favorite, not only for his paintings and wonderful TV show ‘Painting With John’, but also for the magical and funny titles he gives his paintings: ‘These are the fish who triumphed over the language that tried to destroy them.’, and ‘They were weird. But they saw something even weirder.’.
I totally love this, it makes it even more fun for me to see his work. I’m inspired to write titles that work like this, and that also have resonance with the work to which they are attached. Tara Leaver has a post on her website called ‘23 Painting Title Ideas’, find it here.
I’ve often come up with titles by playing around with words, ideas, a line from a book I’m reading, or just picking up a book and randomly opening it to see what shows up.
Here’s a few recent paintings I made whose titles I like a lot.
The New Moths Are Here
This is what I thought once I finished painting all those little dots and dashes of color - those look like the new moths who just came to town. They’re flying about in a kind of celebration dance, what a pretty colorful place they’ve arrived at.
My written description in my shop is this:
‘This beautiful pink landscape looks like it might be on another world, one like ours, but pinker, and with extra moons and planets. It's springtime, and the moths are back in town, and many of them are new this year.
Here they come flying in, ready to brighten the skies and their surroundings with their colorful wings. What's the special occasion in this lovely place that is attracting all of these magical moths? I imagine that soon there will be happy celebrations with lots of lights everywhere, and you know how moths love light!’
This painting is acrylic on canvas, 8”x8”x5/8”, $125.00.
The Big White Fish Dreams of the Diver (Or Does the Diver Dream of the Fish?)
The fish is sleeping and dreaming in the middle of a colorful and sheltered space. In a dream, the diver and some other sea creatures swim on by. But wait - is this the diver's dream of the fish?
Who dreamed who, or did their dreams connect them to each other? Inspired by the magical documentary, 'My Octopus Teacher', this big white fish showed up for me in a painting one day, quite out of the blue.
Am I the diver?
Acrylic on paper, 9” x 12”, $175.00
Star Party
The title of this piece was super easy, it always had a party feel - with stars! Here’s the shop description:
All of the cosmos are partying together!
The moon, planets, sun, stars, and various sparkly cosmic bits are all zooming around together in one big joyful celebration of existence.
What a wonderful example for us humans living together on one small beautiful planet. Maybe we can have more celebrations all together, with everyone included!
Acrylic on paper, 5 3/8” x 8 3/8”, $75.00
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