Blog: How Do I Come Up With The Title of My Work?

Featured image: Yellow Trees Blue Skies

Folks often ask how I come up with the titles of my work.  When I first began to paint, I thought that the titles and even my signature interfered with the essence of the selfness and purity of the work and what the work was to become and be.  The work needed to be a thing in itself in order for it to be art.  

I no longer think that the title and the signature interfere.  But, as many of you have noticed, I frequently don’t sign my work.  Usually, if I don’t sign it on the front, the signature can be found on the back.  I want the work to stand out by itself, and to “be”, and not ”become” because of who I am and my signature.  It is a hard thing for me to abandon it as it is part of who I am.  

But getting back to the titles,  I still hold that the work is a thing in itself.  But a work, as I frequently have discussed, also needs the artist’s hand in it . If that cannot be felt,  then the work isn’t art. Anyone can copy another’s work.

Titles.  Titles now seem to gradually come to me as I work and as I link one thing to another. The  artist and the work become one and the title just happens as I work. As each piece of the work comes alive and real, it’s  at that point that I finish the work with a title and content in mind.