Name My First Painting

The dead­line for name sub­mis­sions is over, and the con­test is closed. I’ll announce the win­ner over the week­end. A big thank you to every­one who par­tic­i­pat­ed!

My first painting

This is the first paint­ing I’ve ever made. I’ll suf­fix that with “in my adult life”, because I prob­a­bly did some­thing with my hands when I was a kid.

Julie, who’s very famil­iar with the medi­um, got me to sit down and paint with her. I was able to play around with dif­fer­ent tech­niques of strokes and the like. It was inter­est­ing to dis­cov­er the way the colours bleed, the con­sis­ten­cy of the paint, and the tex­ture of the can­vas.

It’s def­i­nite­ly abstract. I agree with Dan’s astrol­o­gy read­ing, in which he said that I see colours dif­fer­ent­ly, but that does­n’t mean I can cre­ate them. Frédéric once told me that it’s eas­i­er for him to paint than pho­to­graph, because if he needs a cer­tain colour, he can just add it to the paint­ing by hand, where­as you can’t do this with a scene in pho­tog­ra­phy. My forté seems to be in cap­tur­ing instead.

Painting does­n’t come nat­u­ral­ly to me. In ele­men­tary and high school, I went direc­tion of music (gui­tar, voice, flute, and piano) instead of visu­al art. In uni­ver­si­ty, when I was­n’t play­ing in bands any­more, I stuck with the writ­ten word, and even­tu­al­ly moved to pho­tog­ra­phy and video when that was­n’t enough.

So the paint­ing cur­rent­ly remains unti­tled. Partially because I can’t put a name to it, and par­tial­ly because I haven’t decid­ed what it is. Which seems a lit­tle sil­ly to me, as my need to cre­ate has always come from the need to express. Even though Jackson Pollock once said, “When I am in my paint­ing, I’m not aware of what I’m doing”, his paint­ings still had a direc­tion, a life of their own, much like an impro­vised jazz solo.

What do you see, and what would you name it?

Leave your sug­ges­tions in the com­ments, and I’ll choose a win­ner next Friday. The win­ner will win the paint­ing! Yes, I’ll even ship it to you. The dimen­sions are rough­ly 8.5″×11″ (or 21.6cm×28cm).

33 comments

  1. One bal­lot per com­ment? I could stuff the box ;)

    I saw road­side daisies imme­di­ate­ly

  2. rock­et full of posies and bil­i­ties.

    lush brush rush.

    stroke of pluck.

    empow­er enflower.

  3. I think you should either call it “gen­e­sis” or “let there be light”

  4. Black-eyed daisies”

    Seriously, I should enroll myself into a cre­ative school, LOL.

  5. This is a very inter­est­ing piece of work Jeff!

    At first glance, the col­ors remind­ed me of sun­ny side up eggs. Then when I looked clos­er at the brush strokes and the paint­ing as a whole, they looked like bal­let dancers danc­ing on a dark hard­wood floor. Apparently Robin had the same thoughts!

    I don’t have a title, I like Robin’s.

  6. An Aerial View of Sufi Spinners Bringing Spring

  7. There is bal­ance to the images, and a har­mo­ny to the col­ors ‑some­times two unsung heros in paint­ings.
    Since the burst­ing images reminds me of the big stars in Starry Night, I’d call this paint­ing van Gogh’s Brain Child.
    And, no, I don’t want the paint­ing thank you. I have more paint­ings than wall space back at home.

  8. To me, it looks like there are tih­ngs falling and mak­ing a splash.

    I would call it “Impact”

  9. Mondrian Chickens with­out Wheelbarrow. Hold the Rain.

  10. These are all awe­some names! It’s going to be REALLY hard pick­ing just one. I nev­er men­tioned any­thing about mul­ti­ple entries per per­son, so I’m going to allow it. The offi­cial dead­line will be mid­night EST on February 27th. I find it amaz­ing that I can see the paint­ing in so many dif­fer­ent ways now.

  11. Groupies”

  12. Pearl that’s hilar­i­ous. Love it.

  13. got any favorites yet ????

    • Yeah, a lot of favourites actu­al­ly, but I’m going to do a write-up about them when I announce the win­ner. Sit tight!

  14. daisies on jazz
    I know your dead­line is waaaay over but I love your paint­ing — you should pur­sue paint­ing seri­ous­ly.

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