This painting had a name before it had a shape.
- Carol Burns
- Aug 17
- 1 min read
Usually, all of my paintings are named after I've finished them.
I need to see them, to feel them, and it's only then that the names come.
The Rooted Age doesn't seem to work like that.
At the moment I have eighteen painting titles written in notebooks and not one finished artefact exists yet. It's the complete opposite of how I've always worked.
Hymn For A Drowned Street was called Hymn For A Drowned Street long before I'd even thought about what it might look like.
It was just a title in a notebook.
No sketches.
No composition.
No colour palette.
Nothing.
Just a title that created a feeling I couldn't quite explain.
Every so often I'd find myself turning back to that page.
I still had no idea why that title felt so important.
Then one day I wrote this.
The city did not vanish. It sank into silence. And the earth sang over it.
I still wasn't thinking about painting.
I was just trying to understand why those words had appeared.
A few days later this followed.
The asphalt cracked beneath salt and time. Streetlights swayed like willows in the tide. And somewhere beneath the moss and mud, a traffic signal blinked its last benediction. The hymn rose - not in voices, but in waves. - Tide Psalms, Vol. II
Looking back now, I don't think I was writing about a painting.
I think I was trying to get to know a place.
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