One of my most cherished skills as an artist is the ability to look at any given color and name the exact paint tube (or tubes) it could have come from. Knowing whether a chair is painted Ultramarine or Phthalocyanine Blue is a pretty cool trick, huh? But just as I have started to perfect my knowledge of artists' acrylic paint names, the acrylic house paint market is piling on more monikers to keep track of. And in a real move of curveball trickery, the names they're throwing around are becoming less linked to recognizable colors and more about moods and ambience. The NYT points to the name "Weekend in the Country", a muddy, blobby brown, to exemplify the abstraction.
The New York Times recently covered the trend here:
The New York Times recently covered the trend here:
The above picture shows Valspar paint color trend and forecast specialist Sue Kim. The story quotes her as saying, “We’re exploring color names that are a representation of your lifestyle.”
I wish I could hire Sue Kim to name my paintings... though I might ask for a little more of a link between content and title. I am notoriously horrible at naming — I want to create poetic names with meaning, but like my attempts at novel writing, I get about 1% there and give up. Once, my mom and sister Julie offered to name all my works. I handed over the inventory list with both relief and trepidation. What I got back was impossibly representational and utilitarian! "Rooster"? "Girl with Watermelon"? Not fit for an arteest at all!
So, what I'd like is the paint-can equivalent of the middle ground between "Medium Yellow" and "Trip to the Moon with a Monkey". Help me professional namers!!
I wish I could hire Sue Kim to name my paintings... though I might ask for a little more of a link between content and title. I am notoriously horrible at naming — I want to create poetic names with meaning, but like my attempts at novel writing, I get about 1% there and give up. Once, my mom and sister Julie offered to name all my works. I handed over the inventory list with both relief and trepidation. What I got back was impossibly representational and utilitarian! "Rooster"? "Girl with Watermelon"? Not fit for an arteest at all!
So, what I'd like is the paint-can equivalent of the middle ground between "Medium Yellow" and "Trip to the Moon with a Monkey". Help me professional namers!!
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