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| Creative Process, Painting | |
“Hello Beautiful.” Great name for a painting, eh? It’s by Sarah Kinn and it’s hanging at the Open Studios show at the Boulder Public Library through October 14th. I love this title so much I almost don’t care what the painting looks like. The fact that it’s lovely just lends bonus points. I’ve spent a lot of time watching viewers interact with paintings at Open Studios and other shows. Titles are a huge deal, especially for abstract work. Viewers look to titles for clues about how to understand a painting, to make a connection, or to confirm thoughts they’ve already formed. As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of titles for abstract paintings. Descriptive and evocative. Descriptive titles act as tags that describe the physical qualities of subject or paint. (”Blue Fern” comes to mind.) They can be strong. But they’re grounded. Grounding. Evocative titles (like “Hello Beautiful”) are more poetic and action or story oriented. I’ve used both. I still use both. But these days I’m loving the evocative. How about you? | |
