Recently I’ve been enjoying paging through the dictionary, reading words at random, and I’ve started writing down the words that catch my attention for some reason. I have a particular predilection for words of latinate origin—which is no surprise, given all the years I studied Latin, although I couldn’t translate anything now if my life depended on it. This idle dictionarying also seems promising as a way to glean titles for paintings, always so difficult.
Recent favorites:
Turnsole: Like heliotrope, a plant that follows the sun.
Lubber line: a fixed line on a compass of a ship or airplane that is aligned with the longitudinal axis.
Rive: tear apart, rend; split, cleave; divide into pieces, shatter; fracture.
Rostrum: a stage for public speaking; the curved end of a ship’s prow, esp. the beak of a war galley; the bodily part or process suggesting a bird’s bill.
Loom: the indistinct and exaggerated appearance of something seen on the horizon or through fog/darkness.
Imbricate: to overlap; lying lapped over each other in regular order (like scales).
This last sometimes comes to mind when I’m looking at this painting, trying to figure out what to do next. I often turn the canvas upside down to see it in a different light, and the word imbricate sounds in my mind. I don’t know why, but I find it exciting, somehow redolent of possibilities.
