"Example Dream" 2010 Digital Art by A. Ketcham

I’ve been in a lot of art galleries recently, and I’ve noticed this trend that really bites my nerves. Words on the canvas, only somewhat incorporated into the visual design, and worse, they’re the same abstract words that one should avoid in writing and therefore, I think, doubly avoid in art. You know the list by heart: dream, smile, love, believe, etc. I can deal with a poem ending on the heavy line “I’ve wasted my life,” but for some reason, if that poem were a painting, an idyllic scene of sunlight through pines and golden horse pies and a man in a hammock that had the words “I’ve wasted my life” painted in the sky, I would hate it. That’s what the title should do–provide just enough extra context to give the viewer a jolt.

Environmental phenomenologist David Abram wrote that “…today you read printed words as tribal hunters once read the tracks of deer, moose, and bear printed in the soil of the forest floor.” Maybe that’s true, and if so, I think that ruining a perfectly fine painting by incorporating the word “believe” is like smearing bear shit over a corner of it.

If the audience should walk away with a sense of dreaming or the desire to create personal goals, the work should convey that. It’s not that I’m totally set against clever inclusions of words in art, and the kind of typographical fun where the type itself becomes important, not the message of the word. And those good examples do exist. Photographer Martin Wilson creates words and phrases on his contact sheets and they look amazing even if the message is a whimsical Motown lyric (eg. “Dancing in the Streets”).
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