I am frequently asked to sign my paintings. I don’t want to. It’s not that I can’t understand that the person who gets the painting would want it signed – I mean, it is more convenient for them. But it takes something out of the final product for me.
Supposedly it should be a great feeling for an artist to sign a product. It would finish it definitively, and clear it from the mind’s eye. However, it doesn’t function that way for me. For me, a signature is the sign of death and decay. It is a sign you mark a thing with to declare that it is all downhill from here – no further development is allowed, and from now on the object has been written off by its creator.
Moreover, the signature also takes away from the painting in the sense that it looks wrong. My paintings are frequently painted over the edge of the canvas, and if I were to place a signature at the corner, it would take away from the feeling of continuity I am trying to produce. So only if I could blend my signature into the painting could I sign it – which is difficult, or at least takes considerable consideration. And then I would have to point out to people where they should look to find it as well.
So what do I do when I am asked to sign? I decline. Most often. But not without difficulty. Sometimes I fear that I am being taken less seriously as an artist if I don’t sign the products. But the main problem here is that I don’t see my pieces as “products”; I see them as living things with a mind of their own – a mind I usually discover along the process of creating them. They know what they want, and they do not want my name stamped across their faces. They want their own names. Does that make sense to anybody else than me? I don’t know.
For me, the act of creation that I go through with each painting ends with naming the painting, not with signing it. Once it has matured enough under my hands to be deemed “finished” by all others than the artist (who will always see new opportunities in it) it deserves a name. I duly name it at the end of the process. I don’t sign it. Once signed, it has died. Perhaps if I am once diagnosed with some incurable disease I shall sign all of my paintings before I die – I mean, in that case I wouldn’t be able to keep working on them anyway, so there would be no reason to keep that door open, right?
It’s a tricky question. Or actually, it is an easy question for me, but a tricky decision to live by. There is no doubt in my mind that my signature is unwanted by me as well as the paintings – but very much wanted by the buyer so that they can point it out, and feel like the painting is more valuable simply because of that addition. That however, was never part of my considerations. I never meant to make a fortune. I “just” mean to create for the sake of creating. Because it feels right and meaningful to do so.
Paintings aren’t finished products, they are potentials. They are alive in the sense that they communicate (at least with the artist, and preferably also with the audience) and that they evolve. I’d like the rest of the world to see it that way too. Then perhaps I wouldn’t have to go through the same discussion every time I part with one of my paintings. No, I will not sign it. No, I don’t care whether you think the painting is “unfinished” without a signature. It is unfinished, and that is the highest beauty. What is finished is dead. What is unfinished carries potential for growth and evolution.
It would be nice if people could overcome their overpowering fear and search for security and continuity, and embrace the fact that the world is in a state of constant flux, and that art, if it is to be any reflection of reality whatsoever, has to portray that as well. I hope that day will come. Both because it would be an improvement generally speaking, and because it would make my own life a little bit easier. Just a little.