You may have noticed that my pieces often use lines from songs or poems in their titles, and the titles include the names of the artists and authors. Here are a couple of examples:
blowing through the jasmine in my mind—the isley brothers
this body itself is emptiness
and emptiness itself is this body
—heart sutra
This is an intentional practice of citing sources in order to directly acknowledge the labor of these artists.
Using lines from songs and poems as the title does not mean the paintings were created in response to them; it just means they were in the atmosphere as I was working. For example, I did play “Summer Breeze” on repeat for several hours as the painting came together.