This past year or so, text has started showing up in my work again. During my undergrad, I worked with text in some of my paintings and it was not perhaps the most successful use of text, looking back. I kind of left it out of my practice for a long time, along with installation, sound and photography – other mediums I dabbled in around the same time. These were things I experimented with but never fully developed. I focused on painting and solely painting for many years. It has only been in the past couple of years that I renewed my love of drawing. Recently, text has come back into my work, and it got me thinking about the type of text that has been showing up. The text was always there, just not in the actual painting itself but in the title of the works.
As a painter, I often work alone, and the only company I have is the music I am listening to. And more often than not, they are songs about love – being in or losing love – but all love songs, in one form or another. There are some paintings that are closely related to a specific song or album by an artist that I had on repeat while creating the one piece of artwork. Lately, lyrics have started to creep into my work again, but in the form of text. Thinking about this though has made me realize lyrics have always been important to my art. I would often listen closely to the words being sung, and in a lot of ways, they infused my paintings with specific emotions that I was feeling, while painting, or that were related to the subject of the painting. I can remember how I felt while creating a certain painting with a song lyric title because of the song it references.
This first started when I was working on my La Mélodie de la Nostalgie series, hence the title. The title of each painting in this series corresponds to lyrics of specific songs, although some have been changed slightly so that they make more sense as titles on their own. And then every so often, a lyric would turn up as the title of a self-portrait or of a series of work. I used to try to hide it a bit more, to make it more of a subtle nod that wouldn’t be caught by many. More recently, however, I have been more unapologetic in my use of the song titles or lyrics, without altering them. I didn’t feel the need to hide this aspect of my work anymore, although I still think it is not always obvious unless pointed out.
Art and music have always been my two main passions. When lyrics or song titles aren’t used, musical terms sometimes show up in my paintings, such as reprise and coda…
And so, here is a sampling of some of the songs and musicians who have turned up in the titles of my works – some more obvious than others.
- The Power of Orange Knickers – Tori Amos
- When It Hurts So Bad – Lauryn Hill
- The One You Love – Rufus Wainwright
- Shut Down the World / Leaving You – Rufus Wainwright
- Bizarre Love Triangle – Frente!
- The Way We Were – Barbara Streisand
- I Want to Break Free – Queen
- A Case of You – Joni Mitchell
- I Want the One I Can’t Have – The Smiths
- Heroes – David Bowie