Barbra Sundquist

I’m in the process of making my art website, and one of the most important decisions is how to organize my images. The WordPress theme I’m using (Photocrati) allows me to organize into “galleries”, which is a cool way of categorizing. I’d like to limit the number of galleries to 4 or 5 at the most. So what to name the galleries?

There are a number of ways to go. I could name the galleries by medium (such as acrylic, oil, watercolour, collage, mixed media) or art-making processs (drawing, painting, printmaking) or date of completion (2011, 2010, 2009, etc.) What I’ve decided to do is name the galleries by subject matter. That tends to be the way I think about my art, so it makes sense to me.

I want names that are simple, appealing and general enough to cover my diverse subject matter. Here’s what I’m thinking of:

1. People – anything involving people or the human body
2. Places – landscape, travel, interiors
3. Objects – still life and anything else that has a recognizable inanimate subject
4. Concepts – “abstracts” and idea pieces

I like these four categories. The only thing that seems to be missing is where to put animal images. I could change #3 to “Subjects”, but that seems confusing because all images contain subject matter. Maybe I need to add a separate category for “Animals”. On the other hand, my animal paintings are not animal portraits as such. Rather, they are narrative (usually concerning animal-human interaction) or conceptual pieces. So I think they would fit well under the “People” or “Concepts” categories. There. Decision made.