Painting Studio – Dayna J Collins

How I Title My Paintings

I am often asked how I come up with the titles for my paintings, so I’m going to spill the beans. Whenever I’m reading a beautifully written novel, I keep a piece of paper and a pen handy to jot down portions of sentences or phrases that resonate with how the words are put together. I do the same when I am reading poetry, just taking a few of the words, or “word fragments,” and scribbling them on a scrap of paper. I keep all of my pieces of paper gathered together on a clipboard, which I then refer to when it is time to name a painting. And I get to use one of my vintage clipboards!

It is a bit of a wonky system, and takes some maneuvering, but it has worked for me for many years and I enjoy the process of looking through my scribbles and putting together new combinations of words from the word fragments on my scraps of paper.

I have painted hundreds of paintings over the years, but here is a sampling of my work and the titles I have chosen.

“A Narrow Illumination,” plaster, oil, and cold wax on cradled birch panel, by Dayna J. Collins

“According to Sylvia Plath, the tulips are subtle, they seem to float,” plaster, oil, and cold wax on cradled birch panel, by Dayna J. Collins

“A Protective Charm,” acrylic on 300 lb. watercolor paper, by Dayna J. Collins

“A Ghostly Process of Waves,” oil and cold wax on cradled birch panel, by Dayna J. Collins

“Small Bursts of Illumination,” acrylic on wood panel, mounted in floating frame, by Dayna J. Collins

“Fallen Sun,” oil and cold wax on cradled birch panel, by Dayna J. Collins

New Studio? Almost . . . . .

I came very close to signing a lease on a new studio this week. It was bigger, in a great location, and an affordable price. I’m in the middle of preparing for two major shows in 2021, so I was feeling cramped in my current home painting studio and felt like more wall space would help reduce my anxiety.

It was election day that I looked at the space and I was initially excited about the possibilities. Then I came home and really began thinking about it. I would need to cover the floor with canvas and the walls with plastic. Did I really want to paint in a Dexter kill room? The lighting wasn’t great, but that was solvable. One thing after another and I began to feel more and more unsettled. Or maybe it was just election jitters. And then late into the evening, I knew that this new studio space was not the right fit for me. I conveyed my decision to my most ardent supporter, Howard, and at around 11:30 pm he popped out of bed and walked into my studio, turned the lights on, and just stood there. What can we do to make this space work better for you?

A couple of ideas emerged from our midnight chatter. My shelf of vintage dolls and doll heads would need to come down so I could appropriate that space for studio storage (what!?!). I would move my bookshelf so that that wall space could be converted to an area to hang a painting and make my painting supplies more accessible. But probably the best idea of the night: Howard would build me a movable wall so I could hang and work on two additional paintings.

The next day, Howard headed to the hardware store, bought supplies, and spent the rest of the day in the garage building me my movable wall. I’m in love! Not only with that guy in the garage, but with my new wall.

I took down all of my dolls.

I moved my bookshelf (with a little purging) to the closet and moved all of my boards at various stages of completion to the top shelf where the dolls used to live.

My space isn’t perfect, but it is sure a lot more useful. And I still need to use our upstairs landing for storing larger boards and for boards that are drying. Boards are still drying in our bathroom on top of the bathtub, but it is better than moving into a space that wasn’t the right place or the right time.

If you are curious about what my studio looked like last week, go take a look at the fall issue of Subjectiv: A Journal of Visual and Literary Arts, where my previous studio is featured on pages 89-96!

Studio Revamp

I have two studios. The upstairs one is my painting studio, the basement one is my assemblage studio (aka junk shop). We moved into our new house (it’s an old house, 1926 era, but new to us) about 16 months ago, which allowed me to close down my one-bedroom house studio and bring everything home. Even with two studios in our new house, it wasn’t easy to consolidate everything from an entire house and put it into two spaces.

In December of 2012 I packed, sorted, boxed, donated, and sold all sorts of studio items. The former studio was filled to the brim – every room was mine to fill as I pleased: kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, laundry room, and a tacked on shed (and the back yard, too). It was a herculean task and I couldn’t have done it without the help of friends.

Then what was boxed, needed to be put away.

It was overwhelming, but two friends came to the rescue. Sam helped moved all the boxes and Tory helped put it away.

I’m a pretty organized person, so I put most of the assemblage bits in the basement, but I also put a lot of it upstairs in my painting studio. Over the past year I’ve worked on my Curious Elements and Funky Junkyard Birds in the basement, but I was constantly running upstairs to my painting studio to comb through the bits I had put up there. And then when I was painting in the upstairs studio, I was beginning to feel claustrophobic with all the junk surrounding me.Two weeks ago I realized it was time to reorganize and move the last of the little bits to the basement and clear out some of the clutter (but not the shelves that Tory lovingly filled with my fun treasures).

After a full day of moving stuff out of my painting studio, this is how it looked: