On Titles: Tracey Adams

Tracey Adams says:

"My work is inspired by many years of music study and its organization. Words that reference intervals, counting, circular movement, and numbers grab my interest for titles of various series I've worked on over the last 20 years. Visually this translates as patterns and movement. Sometimes there is an obvious connection with the title, other times, it is more oblique."

Sometimes I use a title of a musical composition that visually conveys something musical as in the Lumenis series (Lumenis 23, encaustic, oil and collage on panel, 40x40, 2013). 

Grapheme (Grapheme 3, encaustic and oil on panel, 40x30, 2013) is the smallest unit in a written language and may or may not have any meaning. Many symbols qualify as language systems, including numerical digits.

Radix, (Radix 22, encaustic monotype, acrylic, cold wax on panel, 36x36, 2012) for example, references a numeral system. In this case, the connection is more oblique.

An older series, Revolution, (Revolution 3, encaustic and monoprint on 4 panels, 30x30, 2006) is a more obvious connection.

On Titles: Julia Schwartz

Julia Schwartz says 

For me, the title is often an integral part of the process of making a painting, and in those cases it works in a kind of associative-linking process: perhaps a phrase is repeated while I'm painting, or a song comes to me or I'm listening to a song and that title becomes the title.  I try not to name things head on, but somewhat elliptically (like the work itself).

Examples: Earlier this year, I was making paintings which I referred to as state-of-being paintings. I called one Dummkopf as a way to convey the experience of not thinking while painting, a not-thinking-painting, hence a Dumb-head:

Dummkopf, 2013 oil on board, 10x8 inches

I've also been working on another series of paintings and in that case they are not so much connected to specific states, but convey something like emotional "atmosphere." In that situation, I chose to number the works in a somewhat idiosyncratic way: 

1.9.31.11, 2013 oil on linen 20x16 inches

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How do you title your paintings? Revisited with Karen Nielsen-Fried

One of my approaches to titles is inviting specific people into my studio.  An artist with insightful vision, Karen  Nielsen-Fried is one of my "go to peeps" for my own work.

Here is her take on titles:

One of the wondrous mysteries of painting, for me, is the not-knowing, the necessary journey without a map, the allowing of the unfolding and blossoming of inchoate ideas into the substance and content of the painting. As i work, words and phrases often play inside my head and intrude into my wordless process; they are phrases that arise as my conscious mind tries to make sense of the intuitive and nonverbal process. I sometime experience this as annoying and I refer to it as "Intrusive Title Syndrome". To quiet these interruptions I make lists of the titles as they occur to me. (I have more titles than i will ever have paintings to title). Sometimes a particular title that comes to me while working sticks for awhile and seems, indeed, to name the painting; to put into words the essence of what I am trying to get at with the painting. I put these "good" titles on pieces of tape and stick them to the back of the painting as i continue working. These titles most often change as the process continues, and sometimes when I finish a painting there are 4 or 5 pieces of tape on the back. Very often i will consider and reject them all and then I will sit and look at and commune with the painting, trying to gather it's spirit and convey it by means of a few words.

I am something of a word geek. I love reading dictionaries and thesaurus(es?), love listening to other languages being spoken, trying to hear patterns and bits of meaning. I am intrigued by the subtle nuanced meanings of words; I revere poets who can distill from and articulate with a few words and phrases some deeply-felt truth. And often it is words and phrases, lines of poetry, titles of books, snippets of conversation, that will fuel a painting. It is then my task-- through the process of painting-- to understand the hold these words have on me, and why they are of such import at that moment, why I am moved by them.  I want my titles to be this same kind of distillation of the essence of my paintings, while still allowing enough ambiguity for a viewer to be able to have their own experience of finding meaning in the work.

For All We Know

  Marginalia

 We Are Always Letting Go