Unnamed Painting, June 2006, Part 3 (finished)

I finished this painting today. I mixed together a pink of Titanium White and Cadmium Red Light with some Gamsol and dotted in the...dots. I don't know what they're supposed to be, but they're there. As you can see, I propped the panel up on my windowsill again.

I'll have to get a better image of the finished painting, but this is good for now. I have no idea what to call it. Tim Folzenlogen, in an e-mail message to me, wrote, "One thing I didn't like, was all your untitled titles. Why unititled? Don't you care?"

In fact I care too much. I'm unsure of titles because they lead the viewer, and sometimes I think that's okay, and other times I think it's superfluous. Because when I look at a painting, if I don't "get it" pretty quickly, I check the title for a clue. And there are times when I think, you know, I don't want to give the viewer a clue. I want them to decide for themselves what the painting is about, how it feels, without my telling them. If I titled this painting "Orgasm Number One," then viewers would think one way about it. If instead I titled it, "Loss and Memory," viewers would think something else about it.

So for now it's untitled. Unnamed. Just what it is, another object.

I love how it came out. Maybe it's simple, maybe it was easy to paint, maybe it's not exciting or interesting. But it's almost exactly what I wanted it to be, and that doesn't happen that often, so I'm happy.