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"No name" brand

I have thus far agreed with every article you've written until now. I am absolutely opposed to signing artworks. Especially with the more contemporary pieces, the signature is a distraction to the piece itself and spoils its integrity. It is a matter of vanity that the artist must distract the viewer from the work with their own ego. I never sign my works with a name. My identity is inherent in the work itself, and doesn't need my moniker on it!

Work smarter

Sheesh, how could anybody fail to do something that will make their work worth more? Art's a tough enough business without shooting ourselves in the foot. It really makes my blood boil… those who don't sign are probably the artists that have "mcjobs" on the side to make ends meet. It takes a long time to build a name and be able to command premium price for our work. How could anyone pass up on an opportunity to create value for their clients? I've worked long and hard to get a six-month waiting list for my work. I sign and number every piece to increase the perceived value of my work. We artists need to work smarter – not harder – to maintain (and hopefully increase) our incomes.

That's pride

There are many good reasons to sign a work in the plastic arts, besides the ones

Dick, get ready for Rita! original painting  click image to enlarge

you pointed out. They also include; value, provenance, proof of copyright (if that's an issue which requires a date, too). Follow tradition – sign it so a frame will not cover any part of the signature and date. Think about every time you see a concert grand piano. What do you see? Steinway? Yamaha? And in gold leaf lettering over high gloss black lacquer. That's pride.

Three reasons to sign

My reasons for always signing the front of my paintings, including copyright

Green Pear in Antique Dough Bowl oil painting  click image to enlarge

symbol and the date are threefold: 1. For copyright protection purposes signing the front makes it easily visible to would-be copyists (although signing/dating the back is also correct. 2. Signature is readable for identifying my work. 3. It feels great to sign a painting, I can move on to starting or finishing the next one. I try to sign it where it balances the rest of the painting in a way that isn't too distracting and sometimes in a color that is used somewhere in the painting and needs to be repeated, as a design element. I also always sign the back, with name, date, title, type of paint, painting support and type of varnish I used.

Lazy signature

I have just put PH on mine for about the past thirty years, and my card says, "Paintings by PH". Why? Because I was lazy and then I had to keep going. Someone once said to me, "In a hundred years from now, people will say who the hell is PH?" He has a point, but in a hundred years from now maybe no one will care.

(RG note) Thanks Pene. Put your name on and in a hundred years someone will be more likely to care.

Another compositional element

It must be realized that the signature in the painting is another compositional

Cactus on Deep Sky oil painting  click image to enlarge

element, in terms of its colour, value, texture, etc. Its influence on the painting should be taken into account, as a signature can either make or break a painting… often the little extra colour it adds, if in the right place, can often balance out the painting. In more than one instance a well placed signature has solved for me a compositional problem. A good trick is after signing, to view the painting blocking with one's finger the signature… does the painting look better with or without the signature? Do you want the signature to stand out, or would you rather it blends in with the work? This depends on your personality… are you extroverted or shy? We can probably tell a few things about the artist's personality as to how he/she signs the work. Sometimes I spend a fair bit of time in getting the signature to work well with the painting.

Woman signing after divorce

I have been wondering what to do about signing my name since I am going through a divorce and want to return to my maiden name. I already have about 100 paintings signed with my married name. I am not sure how to handle the transition. Do I just start signing my maiden name or do I need to change the signatures on the paintings that are still in my possession? Do I add an "AKA" on the back of the painting?

Too many names

My problem is too many names (Vicki Frasier Mooty McCambridge Jones). My first husband died at about the same time my artwork, signed with my married name, was beginning to attract serious attention. When I remarried I began signing my new married name. (I thought about using my former married name as a middle name but decided against that.) I still wonder how many connections were lost in the transition because I was not organized or professional enough to have a good mailing list and to use it to keep people informed. My advice to the single woman artist contemplating marriage: keep your professional name the same. If that name happens to be the name of a former husband, may your new guy be understanding and supportive.

Hidden codes in images

Since a lot of my stuff ends up on the web, I use other forms of authentication, as

original artwork  click image to enlarge

well as my signature. Anything one posts to the web can be copied, and sometimes quite nicely with giclee process and archival papers. My extensive records include "codes" that I build into certain pieces; images or patterns that don't show up on photos, but that are hidden in the piece, such as foil or blacklight underlays. People have suggested fingerprints, but unless one has a databank of the artist's prints, these are too easy to duplicate and fob off on an unsuspecting public. The limited edition prints I sell have been altered slightly, so they differ from the free image on the web (usually hand embellished). I make my habits common knowledge, so I can both freely provide images on the web for downloading, and protect buyers of my limited and original pieces.

Rubber stamp

I have had a series of rubber stamps made up with my last name in clear block

portrait of the artist as spotted dog acrylic painting  click image to enlarge

capital letters. Thankfully, Norgate is rare, so the one name suffices. The stamps idea came to me after years of signing watercolour works with an illegible pencil scrawl. When I switched to acrylics and my work started to go out across the country into galleries, I wanted people to be able to read my name. In fact, I just started showing in U.S. galleries (where I am not known at all) and to this end, had an even bigger stamp made (I do "sign" the works on the back with my legal - and still highly illegible - signature). I want no ambiguity where recognition of my work is concerned. I have to say that this has been a process of almost 20 years, slowly claiming my authority as an artist.

(RG note) Thanks Sheila. The rubber stamp or "chop" tradition is alive and well in Asian countries. A few years ago I was doing drawings and watercolours in Japan. There is no Japanese character for the name Genn. I had a chop made up with a pun on my name – "Hara." Japanese speaking collectors still look at it closely and smile—they get the joke.

Monogram as signature

What about monograms? I've made a monogram out of my first name that's still readable as a name, but is nice and linear and line oriented so that it can be worked in to the elements of the composition along an edge of a shadow or whatever. So that it's not necessarily just sitting down there in the corner as a name that pulls attention to itself and distracts from the work's overall compositional elements. Would this sort of thing be a bad idea?

(RG note) Thanks Jeff. Many painters including J. M. Whistler, Tom Thomson, Egon Schiele and others have used some sort of a device to identify themselves. A cut or a die that can be stamped into wood panels or impressed or embossed into paper is particularly impressive.

Important part of ownership

I just sign "Blair" with paint in my normal handwriting on the lower left side

Three horses original painting  click image to enlarge

(I'm left-handed) of each painting, on the front, of course. I attach a label to the back of each painting that includes my web address, studio address and phone number with space in the middle for a handwritten title and date. When I was in art school, I never signed the front, but always printed the date, title and my full name on the back on a stretcher bar. It may be that some painting styles require that an artist's signature be out of sight, but if it's clear that a painting has been hand-painted, I think that the artist's signature should be included in some unobtrusive way. I usually wait for my paintings to dry before I sign them, so once in a while a painting gets sold without my signature. Someone always notices the signature is missing and they bring the painting back for me to sign. An artist's signature on the work is an important part of owning original paintings to most collectors.

Signature changes

I found that my own "signature" started to change as my paintings went from

Threshing Circle 1 acrylic ink/watercolor painting  click image to enlarge

abstract, complex compositions to reductive and then minimal. At the beginning of the transition I reduced my name to just my last name and then that started to look intrusive so I started to sign just my last name on the side of the painting. Now that I no longer wrap the painting around the sides of the stretcher bars, that looks intrusive so I sign on the back which is sometimes diminished by the wood formats that I now use. It's been an ego adjustment for me. I used to like the ritual of signing and seeing my name there on the front. I had to work with my head to allow the work to dictate that I'm relegated to the back. I'm okay with that now – in fact I'm so proud of the clean paintings that I make that I'm fine with it as are my collectors. If my work changes in the future I don't know that I'll go back to signing them in the front – that didn't start until the Renaissance, I believe. I haven't dated my work for years for the reasons you stated – dated work is dated! I do use my inventory numbers which included a code for the year on the back of the painting.

(RG note) Thanks Marietta. This brings up the current fad of painting around the edges – particularly on canvas stretched on heavy, gallery type stretchers – and signing on those edges. A nice way to avoid framing, yes, but how's about when they want it framed? A signature forever buried. Signatures on the front may be a relatively new idea – having started in the Renaissance – but I think there's a possibility that the recent trend toward side and back signing is due to the effect of a subtle attempt by a few challenged art instructors to grind down the already fragile egos of students.

Print signing

One of my pet peeves is publishers and movie poster folks who remove the

Fallen Goddess #2 original illustration  click image to enlarge

artist's name from his picture and then fail to give him credit. My question is what's the convention for signing and numbering limited edition material. Is the name of the picture sometimes added? I'm assuming number at the left (1/100), title in the center, name at the right. But should the name also be duplicated on the picture itself? Is pencil still the writing tool of choice for this purpose? And how 'bout some nitty gritty like what hardness of lead works best?

(RG note) Thanks Duncan. It depends on the paper of course, but I generally use a 2B pencil – several of them, nicely sharpened. Your left to right order – number, name and signature – is correct. Outside the image area is standard. These days there's a trend to sign (often a second) signature within the image area. This is okay and ink is now often used. Removing signatures digitally while scanning or photographing originals for giclee and photo-litho prints is getting commoner. The idea is that the artist's signature is put on individually and by hand and is something unique. If anyone believes this makes a print any more authentic I've got an aqueduct I can sell them.

Double signing of prints

I have some people telling me to have my name taken off when they print the

Fan 2 original painting  click image to enlarge

giclee so then I can sign and number the piece. Other people tell me that I should not have my name taken off, that I just sign and number under my original signature. My gut feeling is that I should leave my name on and "so what if" my name is in there twice. My original name is proof that I painted the picture!

To fool the public?

I am a printmaker (etchings) turning to painting and have had a time deciding

original etching

whether to sign my name the same (I have a fancy "H" and can't do it with a brush). This sets me straight. I think the reason painters are not signing their names is so they can have reproductions made of their paintings and fool the public into thinking the giclees and such are original works. It has always been my explanation (having original prints myself) to people that in a reproduction, the painting is signed twice, once in the work and again on the paper in pencil. Now the public is so confused with artists "enhancing" the giclees with globs of paint. It makes life very hard for those who make traditional hand pulled prints.

Not where I am right now

I have always signed my lithographs and etchings in the borders according to tradition – but I find that signing a painting on the front gets in the way of the work. You know the old academic concept of every square inch of the work being part of the whole. Sometimes I look back and realize that I didn't really make the painting but was there helping it come into being. It is its own thing if it is any good at all – mine when it is not so hot. So I give full documentation on the back of a painting but usually give considered hesitation to sign the front. I know there are many arguments for doing so, some of which you cited. It is okay for others – just not where I am right now.

Signing on the glass