An art student at the Pacific Northwest College of Art remarks that Matt signs his paintings on the front of the canvas, and reports hearing differing views on whether this is proper.

Matt reponds:

I’ve always signed my paintings, much to the chagrin of certain people.  I’ve been told sign them on the back, don’t sign them, how to sign them, and that I shouldn’t use only one name, LAMB, because that’s presumptuous.

My feeling is, they’re my paintings, and I’ll brand them in whatever damned way I want to.  If people don’t like it, they shouldn’t look at them.  Do we have signature police?  It doesn’t make it any better or worse because Picasso wrote “Picasso” on it.

I will say that, for me, especially in my abstract work, I love to look at a painting 4 different ways.  Some people want to hang the painting upside down, and they’re pissed off that the signature is where it is.  I tell them to put a black bandage over it.  Ultimately, it would be a cop-out for me not to sign the work, because at some point during the partnership between the painting and me, we decide that it is done, and I formalize that by signing it and dating it.  That’s what says that this is the best that Lamb can do at this given point in time.  If I went back later, I would start working on it again, but I don’t think I should go back to the past and try to rewrite history.

So that happens to be my own way of looking at my own world.  A lot of people don’t like the way I look at the world, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to change, and it’s presumptuous on their part to think they can tell an artist how to make art.  What the hell is an artist?  It’s someone who undertakes an architectural dig through their own psyche.  I don’t give a dman whether you want to spit on it, piss on it, or throw up on it—it’s your business.

As you can see, I feel strongly about this, because in the end, after reading the book, The View from the Center of the Universe, I realize more than ever that my job is not to be Picasso or Michelangelo, it’s to be the best Matt Lamb that I can be.  And when I put my name on it, there’s no doubt it’s Lamb, like it or lump it.

Signed,
LAMB