I’ve long thought that an artwork with a simple title, telling exactly what it is and nothing more, was fine, for example, Picasso’s ‘Woman seated in a Chair’. It wasn’t until I started giving my paintings titles that I thought how nice it would be to give the pieces an additional branch of personality.
That’s when I started sitting for hours twiddling my pencil, trying to come up with a name for a mountain landscape, all I could think of was… …‘Mountains’.
It reminded me of the French films I watched when living in France. Continually throughout the film the camera would focus on the face of a character, or an object, for an inordinate length of time. With a character, you could settle into the moment. This gave the film depth, and by the end the long focuses fitted into place.
However, it wasn’t the same if objects were the focal point, for example, a blue sock (which starred in one film!). It, more often than not, didn’t have any relevance, but we would see a close up of it on the back of a chair, or blowing alone on a washing line. It did get the viewer puzzling over its major relevance to the storyline, but by the close of the film, it obviously had none! I now fondly call French films, ‘Blue Sock Films!
Anyway, I didn’t want the title for my painting to become a blue sock name, leaving the viewer puzzling over it and wondering about its relevance. So, it was in fact by accident, when looking for a particular book that I discovered my source for titles in a book on the poems of Robert Louis Stevenson. There are some beautiful words threading through the lines of his poetry, and I thought it would be fitting to embrace words that connected with the Scottish landscape!
I love mulling the words around, and some surprising, but perfect titles pop up!
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