The question of titles

 

Pages from my 2013 studio journal

The question of titles for my work comes up every now and then and I thought that I’d address it here as best I can. Anyone who has heard me talk about this in the past knows that titles are tricky for me. They are usually the last thing that I’m thinking about in the process of making art. It’s very rare that I’ll go into the painting process with a title already in mind. I do like to give my works titles of some sort, sometimes just for identification purposes. In a pinch, the very least I’ll do is something like, “Untitled (green 1)” or assign a number that is usually some configuration of the date the piece was completed. I usually do this with works on paper. 

Titling a work can be tricky, but the first thing I like to do is think about the piece and how it feels to me once it’s done. Does anything jump out at me formally? Is there some visual connection to a place or scenario that I know or have experienced? I might be working on a series and make some variation on the main series title. There’s never usually any one thing that influences a title. When making work, I’m always listening to music, podcasts or there’s just silence. Various things that I might be thinking about, emotional state of mind, how I’m feeling physically can also have a hand in it. “What were you thinking about when you made this?” Is never that simple. There's always a stew of many influences. Usually, my head is in the space of the painting that I'm working on. I'm trying to see how things are coming together or if they are not. 

To help in the titling process, I like to keep a running list of various ideas. Many times, as a starting point, I like to jot down a song lyric from something I’m listening to or maybe there’s a good sentence from something I’ve read that sounds good. I never copy things verbatim, I like to shuffle words and phrases around to come up with something that seems to work with a particular piece. I keep pages in my sketchbooks just for lists of potential titles. Some of my titles have a narrative feeling to them and often, I’ll make those up. It’s a combination of having overheard a snippet of a real conversation, making up a scenario of my own and coming up with something out of that. 

TM