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Today I write about the process of naming a painting when it is finished.  Some painters are marvelously gifted at coming up with clever, pun-like names for their works.  Carol Marine, a prolific daily painter, has some of my favorite titles.  Occasionally I have a fun or particularly descriptive title come quickly to mind.   For example, my painting "Til the Cows Come Home", practically named itself.  But more often I struggle.  Some people believe that a title of a painting should not "tell" or disclose anything that the painting doesn't tell.  Umberto Eco writes that the title of a book "must muddle the reader's ideas, not regiment them."   Hmmm.  As for the recent painting pictured here, "Red Napkin and Brown Bag" just doesn't seem to cut it.  "Brown Bagging It" sounds too much like what we used to do in the dark ages before liquor by the drink was legalized in NC.  I am open to suggestions!

OK, these are actually French radishes, not Christmas radishes.  But as I set this painting out for display at the Holiday Open House, the red and green colors spoke to me of Christmas, so "Christmas radishes" they are for now!  I painted a series of different varieties of radishes and beets this summer.  It was a challenge to work with all the different reds, but I enjoyed the process and the results.