Rethinking my titles
02.23.2024
Lately I’ve been rethinking the way I am titling the paintings in this series. With the framework of a single day as a way to narrow my inspiration collection and provide a bit of context for the viewer, I originally planned on naming each work with a time frame. The time frame would represent the minutes in which I collected the visual inspiration for each painting. I used the same method of titling for my grad school thesis, as I used a single day as my time frame as well so that my body of work represented a day in the life told through abstraction. With that said, this current project about Venice seems less analytical and more poetic in a lot of ways. First, it’s Venice. The setting itself is so visually rich that it’s difficult to take in even having spent 2 weeks there. And second, the structure of time frames seems less exciting and more rigid now. While I am still thinking a lot about time and place in my work, even more so in recent years than I did back then, maybe the conversation with the viewer needs to be about what I was experiencing aesthetically, what I was feeling, what I was hearing as I moved through the city. Also, in addition to the hundreds of photos I collected and video clips I recorded, I also managed to scribble down notes in real time about all of the things I was noticing.
I thought I would put those notes to use in creating titles that were more descriptive than the time frame in which I was collecting the inspirational observations. Today, I gave it a try and really enjoyed the process of going back through my notes from that day and determining which written observations could work for titling the paintings. For example, 9:39-9:42 am becomes Morning Light is Bright But Soft. I also think that more descriptive titles removes the initial single day context, which helps the viewer with understanding when the work is viewed without the rest of the collection. They give the viewer even more insight into what I was seeing and thinking than just the more generic feeling of the time. Here are some more examples:
Each Layer Tells a Story
The Water is Everything
Quiet Surrounds Residential Apartments
Pulse: Contemporary Meets Classical
Street Art Combines Synthetic with Historical
Puffs of Green Interrupt the Gray
Red and Pink Live Together
I’m 7 paintings into this series and loving it, especially with this new direction for the titles. Like the most recent painting shown above, Shapes Created by the Light are Changing.
