It can always be a bit of a struggle to know what to write about each month, particularly when I have been carrying on with the same investigations and nothing new has happened. Normally I simply like to write about what I am working on at the time, the reasons behind it and what is going through my mind as I work.
This is the case this month when I have been working in my studio. I am still focusing on my ‘still life’ pieces, specifically on jugs and teapots which I own and exploring the idea of commodity fetish. I have been working with watercolour on canvas which is not my normal medium and a bit of an experiment within itself.
I am at the stage of having to give them titles and this is the subject I am going to briefly discuss today. Artists tend to have different methods in how they name their art pieces. Mine is not particularly clever. As I work on a piece I inevitably give it a name in my head for the purpose of functionality and reference – ‘I must carry on with my ‘Midnight’ piece today (a simple example) or ‘what is the next step for my ‘Urban desire’ collage?’. More often than not, this will form the basis for the name of the final artwork. Sometimes this system works just fine, other times it can be a bit wobbly. I must admit I do rather like a poetic aspect to the naming but this very much depends on the piece and it is very easy to go a bit overboard on this which can be rather cringe-worthy.
If I were to carry on with this naming convention, then my jug and teapot pieces would have the following names:
‘The teapot from Seville’
‘The purple gravy boat’
‘The brown patterned teapot’
‘The tall blue jug’
‘Charity shop find’
‘You can’t name a painting Charity shop find!’ exclaims my youngest son. ‘Why not?’ I ask. ‘It is how I think of it’. ‘It sounds terrible. It needs a much more sophisticated name’ says he. ‘But that would be pretty cheesy’, I reply. Thus for the time being I have settled for it’s title ‘The cream flowery jug’. It may yet be changed.
