What’s it called?
When I lived in Germany, working within the art academy there, I started to notice how seriously everything was taken. The language around work, the analysis, the framing, the endless unpacking of intention. It was a space full of sharp thinking, rigorous practice, and a very official way of speaking about art.
And I loved it, but I also found myself wanting to interrupt it slightly.
That’s when my titles became a kind of small mischief.
Often a little silly. Slightly unexpected. Sometimes almost too simple.
Not to undermine the work, but to soften the air around it. To create a small shift in tone where something might otherwise tighten too much.
I wanted the title to do something human.
To make someone pause in their head for a second, and then maybe (just maybe) let out a small smile in the middle of all the careful interpretation.
A title can do that.
It can interrupt the seriousness without dismissing it.
It can sit at the entrance of a work like a small, disarming voice saying: you don’t have to approach this quite so rigidly.
For me, titles aren’t labels added afterwards. They’re part of the making. Sometimes even before the idea fully arrives.
I collect them the way I collect thoughts while walking; noticing words, rhythms, small combinations of language that feel alive together. I listen to how they sit in the mouth, how they behave next to each other, why some feel like they carry more weight than others, even when they mean very little on their own.
The work isn’t finished until the title feels right.
Until it clicks into place like it was always there, waiting to be noticed.
In that sense, I don’t really title works at the end.
I work towards a title.
And maybe one day you’ll notice a fragment of a conversation we once had, quietly reappearing as the title of a strange painting of mine. And it might all make sense then; why I enjoyed that slightly silly chat about what we had for lunch so much, or why those small, throwaway sentences mattered more than they seemed to at the time.
Holly,
Somewhere near the Atlantic.
